We launch from a bag hung in the pulpit, and douse to leeward into the companionway, and it can get real ugly. Most of our racing is around the cans, so we can have a stbd rounding at one mark and port rounding at the next - that complicates the issue a bit. Launching from the pulpit gives us a lot of flexibility.
We have a hot J/29 fleet here - they race windward/leeward, and the majority (maybe all of them?) launch & douse in the forward hatch.
