Was this the Senior blind this weekend? Sounds kinda familiar...
Under the circumstances, I think the judges did OK. They had very limited water for the test, which is why Senior started with water first. They had to hightail it out of there so Master could move in for their land/water second series.
Given the constraints of a necessarily wide-open double and NO blind up the middle for Senior, they really had no place else to put the blind, unless they were going to walk every handler upstream and get a fresh spot OR combine the land and water blinds as a separate series. Either one of these would have eaten up time (and the Master takes precedence as far as water, grounds, help, etc.)
I only saw a few dogs run, but from what I saw, more dogs had a problem with either wanting to channel past the point, or sucking back to the left-hand mark they had just picked up. To give them credit, the judges did place decoys along the shoreline. This created "equal" suction for the dogs. Dogs that tended to pull toward the dekes did OK. Too many handlers allowed their dogs to swim WAY out to sea before starting to handle, which allowed the dogs to get thinking about that mark. Handlers who kept their dogs tight did OK.
Just my observations. I apologize if this is not what you were talking about.
Lisa