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Borne out of the general boat thread. Sailboat racing is more fun, scary, expensive and stupid than racing cars. Its equal parts redneck & idiotic as dainty and hgh-class in my experience. I've been racing for about 10 years, mostly on J24s, Flying Tiger 10s and Wavelength24s. Lately I've had the pleasure of crusing around around on a C&C99. Lets talk about making bad fiberglass repairs and beating 5 knot poo poo boxes over the line on corrected time. Cheers folks. Mount Gay. Crunchy Black fucked around with this message at 19:46 on May 13, 2020 |
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May 13, 2020 19:42
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Slightly off topic, but you may enjoy this youtube series of a professional surfer buying a gunboat and documenting his trip in the Pacific. The first episode touches on his sailing experience and shows some foil catamaran's that look amazing. https://youtu.be/hmH3XMlms8E
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May 13, 2020 19:58
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VELA is awesome and I need to do more dinghy sailing.
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May 13, 2020 20:28
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Gybe or Tack but DO SOMETHING NOW *crunch*
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May 13, 2020 20:46
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No racing this year due to corona but I’m usually out on a J105 in Fleet 1. I also race on a 1924 gaff schooner, some old Farallon Clipper 38’ sloops my friend has, and once in a blue moon I dust my boat off for some hooning (Santa Cruz 50). I’m also restoring a ‘74 Flying Junior dinghy. So far all of my racing and most of my sailing has been in SF Bay.meltie posted:Gybe or Tack but DO SOMETHING NOW *crunch* I’ve been in something like 7 collisions, from rather benign glancing bumps to a full-speed T-bone that caused about $100k damage (not at fault, or at the helm).
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May 13, 2020 20:49
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I think my favorite is having a J24 win/lee of a Melges. Even the bravest of those skippers know that isn't a fight they're gonna win haha
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May 13, 2020 20:56
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Big Taint posted:my boat for some hooning (Santa Cruz 50) My dream boat  Also J/105 fleet 1. Supposedly St Francis is still on track to do RBBS in September(?) we'll see what happens there my guess is no
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May 13, 2020 21:26
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I'd be jealous if y'all were actually sailing. Racing season around here (norcal) seems to end around the first week of June so nothing this year despite having the boat ready in March. At least my 100% podium finish record as movable ballast gets to remain intact for another year.
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May 13, 2020 21:57
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Boys who love boys
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The key to enjoy racing is to crew on someone else's boat.
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May 13, 2020 21:59
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Popete posted:The key to enjoy racing is to crew on someone else's boat. Ain't this the loving truth Crewed for 7? 8? 9? years? I always wondered why the skipper had 100 tiny annoying broken things on the boat, each one only took maybe 5-10 minutes to fix if you had the parts, never did understand why Turns out ordering the correct parts, plus having time to work on the boat, not to mention money to buy said parts, is a rare commodity Plus you have to fuel it, dock it, get the sails repaired etc etc it's exhausting As crew you just show up with a life jacket, hopefully a marlin spike and some beer, go sailing, wreck their boat, drink, go home
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May 13, 2020 22:12
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YRA of SF Bay just announced Contra Costa (Richmond Yacht Club) and Solano Counties (Vallejo YC) are allowed to hold regattas again, I don't know what that means exactly, Great Vallejo Race was already rescheduled for October but I think Richmond does quite a bit of club racing
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May 13, 2020 22:15
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If anyone in the bay ever needs a hand I'm game. My moving-from-port-rail-to-starboard-rail-and-back credentials are impeccable. I don't mind being screamed at and even enjoy doing boat work.
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May 13, 2020 22:22
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Hadlock posted:My dream boat It rules. Hadlock posted:Also J/105 fleet 1. Supposedly St Francis is still on track to do RBBS in September(?) we'll see what happens there my guess is no I want to believe that we'll be in a place where that seems like a good idea by September. We'll be so out of practice it'll be a complete shitshow. 
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May 13, 2020 22:45
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The Feds announced today we're not allowed to hold any offical events on Lake Lanier through the end of the month. Glad to see some traction in here! Heres the raceboat J the day we packed her up to head south out of Charleston pre quarantine.  Popete posted:The key to enjoy racing is to crew on someone else's boat. also very true. I successfully do not own a boat...yet. A J88 is available around here.... Crunchy Black fucked around with this message at 02:20 on May 14, 2020 |
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May 14, 2020 02:17
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Friends don't let friends race PHRF. *cackles in shark24* I've been racing sharks for... 8 years? now. It was my first introduction to sailing, and I've had the bug ever since. Last summer, while in the middle of looking for a house, a somewhat neglected but sailable shark 24 became available at our club, mostly intact, including a solid trailer and working motor, for $1800. We bought it. Included trashed sails, a whisker pole from some unknown boat jury rigged to work as a spin pole (lol nope not a loving chance), a questionable but functional traveler, a small amount of blocks (why... why... WHY WERE YOU RUNNING THE 180 ON THE TOE RAIL THOSE ARE THE SPINNAKER BLOCKS aSDFLK:ASJDFAS), and a hole drilled just aft of the keel (the boat sat for 2 years uncovered and leaked like a sieve, and was never bailed. The PO drilled a hole to drain it and prevent water from collecting while they worked on making it dry. They successfully sealed all the leaks, which on a shark is craziness, and then proceeded to fix the hole by putting a bolt through it with washers on both sides and half assed slapping some fairing compound over the bolt head. It doesn't leak, so in true shark fashion, that's how it remains.) Overall it's a solid boat, sharks are difficult to kill. There was some rot in one of the bulkheads, but that was (shoddily, but workably) repaired prior to us buying it. I've got a list a mile long of things to adjust / fix / etc, but honestly it's perfectly fine to race as it is. I'm told, from a previouspreviouspreviousprevious owner, that it's a fast boat. Considering the previous owner runs Kingston Sail Loft, and has won the shark worlds (not on this boat), we're going to throw it in the water next summer and see what happens. We tried to get him to tell us how much corrector weight it needed to carry, as the earlier boats are known to be extra light, and he smiled and said somewhere north of 100lbs. On a boat with a bare boat weight of 2200lbs, that's uhhhhhhhhh fun. We're going to see how it handles before tacking bigger projects, but I'm excited about this being a project as well as something we can race. Sailing's the best. Also, sharks are hilarious. 30+kn breeze, gusts over 45 on the last downwind leg, and we decided it was better to not put the chute up after watching the 4 boats ahead of us blow them out. Instead, we went on just the main and managed 14knts peak 12.5knts avg boatspeed surfing the waves. A sharks hull speed is somewhere around 6knts. We've named the boat almost adequate. That is all.
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May 14, 2020 03:55
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The Shark is a good looking boat. I think in most boats >30kts sustained is 'no kite' territory. Our boat actually came with a 'heavy kite' for poo poo like that, it's like 2oz cloth. The sailmaker called it a 'rig killer' because if you stuff the boat into a wave or catch a huge gust the kite will stay together and pull the whole rig down with it. To run a kite in any kind of breeze on the SC I need minimum 8 good crew, and I just don't have that many friends. So I want to scrap most of the kites except maybe the big runners for light air and switch to asymmetricals. Which means I need to build a sprit... The spin poles on the SC are 20' long, and we carry two. However, being carbon fiber I can hold them with one hand.
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May 14, 2020 04:30
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Do any of you crew on the big boats that race? I met some people in Newport, RI that do the whole "different races around the globe thing," but the owner was saying the crew during races were paid ~$3k/day, plus you have to put them up and feed them. It seemed like a pretty small community where everyone knew each other, and it sounded like a shitload of fun, especially if you were on the younger side. I'm not into boating at all but I also found the sail crew vs powered yacht crew divide interesting. One of the sailing crew members explained it to me as no matter what your job is on a sail boat, you still have to have sailing skills and know a fair amount, whereas if you're cleaning the rooms on Spielberg's yacht, that's all you know how to do. I don't think I could do a sail boat full time though, I'm tall and even on a huge sail boat I basically just walked hunched over all the time for fear of hitting my head on something.
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May 14, 2020 17:38
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MomJeans420 posted:Do any of you crew on the big boats that race? I met some people in Newport, RI that do the whole "different races around the globe thing," but the owner was saying the crew during races were paid ~$3k/day, plus you have to put them up and feed them. It seemed like a pretty small community where everyone knew each other, and it sounded like a shitload of fun, especially if you were on the younger side. I've got several friends who are involved. Most don't get paid at all, but free food, free travel all over the world, and the chance to sail some amazing rigs. I live on Cape Cod, so there's a lot of sail-folks around. Several friends have done the Newport Bermuda Race, they all said it was an awesome experience. I'm not a sailboat guy, but it sure looks fun.
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May 14, 2020 18:29
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Ya you have to be really really good to get paid to race. But if you can get on some rich dude’s huge boat they generally pay for all of your expenses. And if you do a distance race often you can get paid to help bring the boat home (i.e. the return from the Hawai’i races). Height is a liability on boats.
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May 14, 2020 18:47
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MomJeans420 posted:Do any of you crew on the big boats that race? I met some people in Newport, RI that do the whole "different races around the globe thing," but the owner was saying the crew during races were paid ~$3k/day, plus you have to put them up and feed them. It seemed like a pretty small community where everyone knew each other, and it sounded like a shitload of fun, especially if you were on the younger side. The biggest program I've ever been involved with in any sort of regular fashion is a Tiger10 or a 1D35. Anything bigger than that and you might as well be doing a TransPAC or TransAT ha. Even if you're not a Pro, the trick is to get on one of the programs where the skipper puts you up and buys your booze, dinner and gas/plane ticket  I can say, especially in the southeast, the community of folks that are very good and do a lot of regattas can be insular, but in general, are an accepting bunch so long as you're not a dick. I've only been to a limited number of regattas in the more 'traditional' sailing areas, (think San Diego, the NE, Great Lakes) so I can't really comment if that's a regional thing or not. I think, in general, your second paragraph is mosty right--if you're 'good' at all, you can do it all, i.e., so you can be trusted to stand watch on longer trips and be useful in an emergency if you're on deck. Power boaters (in general) can't be trusted to know the rules of the road, if you value your safety. Big Taint posted:The Shark is a good looking boat. I think in most boats >30kts sustained is 'no kite' territory. Hell yes. We have a 4oz kite for the Wavelength. Let god take it down, eh? Proliferation of carbon poles have been the biggest change/improvement since I've been racing. I helped a buddy put a sprit on his Soverel 33 and it turned that thing back into the 80s rocket ship it was supposed to be. Would routinely beat up on the Tiger10 in PHRF. Oh yeah, edit: we took the wavelength out with that kite, boned the rig up 3 steps and hit 12.2 with ~900 lbs of crew weight in 22true last Wednesday. I was trimming the Vang from the cockpit floor forward of the traveler. We decided to not pitch pole the poor thing at that juncture. Crunchy Black fucked around with this message at 21:33 on May 14, 2020 |
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May 14, 2020 21:00
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MomJeans420 posted:Do any of you crew on the big boats that race? I met some people in Newport, RI that do the whole "different races around the globe thing," but the owner was saying the crew during races were paid ~$3k/day, plus you have to put them up and feed them. It seemed like a pretty small community where everyone knew each other, and it sounded like a shitload of fun, especially if you were on the younger side. For big boats I'm assuming you mean > 50'. In my area we have a "big boats series" which I think has a formal lower cutoff at 32 feet but recently they're allowing the J/70s (22ft keel boat) in to keep the event from being a ghost town. 3k per day is pretty high, I think it is typically in the 50-150/day range. I think if you were Volvo Ocean Race crew off season and doing Rolex Middle Sea or Sydney Hobart on Rambler 88 or Wild Oats XI or whatever 300/day is very likely Sailboats are sailboats, they use a keel to keep upright, you need to be comfortable walking when the boat is heeled over at 30 degrees for a week. True super yachts (150'+) are so big and beamy they're basically large mansions that float around to all the nice areas and yeah you're basically house cleaning crew, plus a cook, captain and maybe full time engineer. Crunchy Black posted:The biggest program I've ever been involved with in any sort of regular fashion is a Tiger10 or a 1D35. Anything bigger than that and you might as well be doing a TransPAC or TransAT ha. The first boat I crewed on in the west coast was a 1D35, he'd already done transpac on the boat twice, we had another 1D35 currently refurbished and is in the local area, I think he's intending to do pac cup or transpac on it... 35' isn't unreasonable at least five or six 30-40' class J boats do Transpac/Pac Cup each year.... actually a J/125 (41') won transpac overall and even had their own 5 boat J/125 class
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May 14, 2020 23:11
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You in San Diego, Hadlock, if you care to disclose? I'm in Atlanta and typically do 10~ weekends a year in Charleston + Raceweek and whatever of the spring J circuit we can string together in Florida. The rest is Lake Lanier. Hadlock posted:had their own 5 boat J/125 class Kick. rear end.
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May 15, 2020 00:18
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I'm here in northern california, we never formally joined fleet 1 but we're in a bunch of regattas. It's a bad idea to keep track of anything where you can start calculating how much money you spend per hour on the boat, but we probably do 20 weekends a year on the boat, more than half of that is racing. Most of them are the YRA party regattas with some sort of raft up. We have issues dousing our spinnaker(???) which doesn't make us very competitive doing sausage courses. I am new to the area so I'm recruiting and training all my crew from scratch and it's hard to train crew from the back of the boat with a beer in your hand. Big highlights for us have been spinnaker cup in 2018 and 2019, which is a ~90 mile offshore overnight trip from San Francisco to Monterey, done Great Vallejo Race every year, and also attempted Delta Ditch Run (72 mile DDW) with an asymmetrical spinnaker. Last year we did our first non-spinnaker offshore race up to Drake's Bay where we overnight in a semi-protected bay at anchor and then sail back during peak whale season southern migration, that was fun. Spinnaker Cup also happens during peak whale northern migration it's not uncommon to see 20-30 whales. I've personally T-boned a whale surfing down a wave (on someone else's boat) and then we gently bumped off another whale another time (our boat). This year was supposed to be the big year for offshore racing, farallones full crew, farallones double handed, spinnaker cup, maybe do the entire california coastal cup (SF to San Diego) to kind of prep the whole crew for a possible TransPac 2021 entry. We're fully certified for the trip minus the life raft (rent) and emergency rudder (build). We did both A and B offshore training last year for the whole crew as a group which includes the jumping in the pool and entering the life raft etc. Pretty bummed we didn't get to do coastal cup because it's a wild downwind ride and a perfect training run for transpac, plus then the boat is in san diego ready to go poke around in mexico all summer. Crunchy Black posted:Kick. rear end. Not to turn this thread into a youtube video thread but I like to think of the J/125 as a (visually) bigger version of our boat and this'll be exactly our experience, even though the 125 is a totally different significantly lighter beast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj6yZfe7oUg edit: Big Taint posted:some hooning Definition of hooning ^^ Hadlock fucked around with this message at 09:24 on May 15, 2020 |
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May 15, 2020 08:54
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J125s definitely look like a blast. Hopefully they will supplant the J105 fleet, which don’t plane for poo poo. RE: dousing a kite, that’s where everyone has the most issues I think. 90% of it is the driver, if you douse late and the driver turns up before it’s down you’re hosed. We do a lot of Mexicans (take up on lazy jib sheet, gybe and douse the kite into the now leeward jib, just funnels it into the hatch if you get it right). On a regular weather douse I’m on foredeck, I pull the sheet and get the clew to the deck and put a knee on it aft of the hatch, then try to get the foot back and in the hatch while my squirrel finds the red tape and hauls rear end on that. My pit is often timid with dumping the halyard so I am usually yelling for more. We almost always run with six crew so we always have a squirrel, when we are five up then main trim usually comes to squirrel.
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May 16, 2020 01:06
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So, pacific cup (SF to Hawaii) was cancelled this year for obvious reasons They're doing a virtual race online here, it's free: http://www.sailonline.org/ The specific link is here: http://www.sailonline.org/breezy/run/1371/ Probably going to regret that It's kind of nice because it's a lightweight interface, and shows exactly where on the polar chart your boatspeed is at. I'll give you a hint, there's a high pressure zone in Alaska that's going to drop south into the middle of the race course, you want to skirt south of it (and probably the rhumb line) at some point. High pressure zone = sunny, calm, no wind; low pressure = cold, windy, possibly a hurricane etc Right now they're doing a test sail so everyone gets comfortable with how it works, you can join the test sail at any time; the "formal" race starts... July 3 I think? Boats don't go fastest directly downwind, you want to have your AWA be 180, you want to maximize for most total time with AWA (apparent wind angle) between +/- 130-170 and minimize time between +/- 90-40 AWA   Here, below, you can see the high pressure zone, blue, SLOW, moving down south into the middle of the race course, red is along the rhumb line, and orange shows where it'd be faster, but you'd add hundreds of extra miles to a 2200 mile race  Here, below, 7 days later you can see the blue SLOW zone has moved south across the shortest route (rhumb line), so you'll want to move away from there, slightly, so you maintain good speed and don't get stuck for days with no wind. The fastest route has moved further south, and the best route sits somewhere south of the rhumb line. There's actually fancy software called route planning software that takes these long term weather forecasts into account, plus your boat's custom polar charts etc, but if you don't have $1000 to spare you'll probably just have to eyeball it and hope for the best  This all happens in real time using real weather data, which is pretty neat. Since it's happening in real time you need to check back and see what the weather actually did in your area, vs the predicted outcome, and then modify your course accordingly. You can queue up one future maneuver X time in advance, I'll be crossing under the rhumb line to catch what's left of this 20 kts puff and then hold ~70 miles south of the rhumb line until I cross under the high pressure zone that's developing to the north of the course
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Jun 30, 2020 02:38
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Online pac cup kicks off here in about 30 min if anybody is interested, link above. Last time I'll mention this unless someone else chimes in
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Jul 2, 2020 19:37
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Ok I lied. With ~260 active participants I'm currently ranking #1 overall, with a ~0.25nm lead over the next two participants. 1.03nm separates the top 10 places About a hour after the race started, a counter-clockwise wind system looped through the north end of the course which did a good job of separating the fleet. About six of us all tacked at the last moment, within 10 seconds of eachother and then followed the wind line until we were pointing at the finish line and it's been a drag race ever since. #2 and #3 have attempted to make weak challenges to my position, but they lose speed climbing above my line and then have to make back the distance to finish. Weather looks relatively stable with no events that would allow a competitor to challenge my position without them losing further ground; and I'm on a pretty straight course pointed directly at the closest end to the finish line, about 1970 miles away. Currently holding #1 for about 4 hours, will have to see what things look like in the morning. Right now everybody is holding steady speed and nobody is moving positions on the leaderboard, and we're on the edge of the synopitc wind now so wind shifts should be easier to see hours out. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Jul 3, 2020 |
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Jul 3, 2020 08:57
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The only wind sports I've ever done are a season of kite surfing and a couple sessions of foil winging. But I'm really enjoying your race. Keep the updates coming. 
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Jul 3, 2020 16:41
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Bummed I missed the PACCup start, completely forgot about it. The two regattas I had left this year, Meigs in St. Pete and Charleston Open are now officially shut down, again. I do get to crawl in a lazarette of a CC99 to yank speaker wire in preparation for the 4th in a bit, though! The J24 is also in need of serious deckwork and the skipper and I have material on order to do it. Not that I want to....
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Jul 3, 2020 16:51
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Hdip posted:The only wind sports I've ever done are a season of kite surfing and a couple sessions of foil winging. But I'm really enjoying your race. Keep the updates coming. I guess at this point this is sort of a Let's Play huh Boring stuff probably skip this  Ok so this is a polar chart. Boats can go downwind, and due to physics they can also go upwind. Boats can go directly downwind, but they cannot go directly upwind, they have to be at an angle. Depending on the boat (sticking to displacement boat here), sail plan, hull shape, weight etc different boats go faster or slower at different points of sail. A polar chart is a standardized way to show this. Basically, that rainbow, represent boat speed at different wind speeds. Assuming the wind is coming out of the north, starting at the top theres basically no speed as long as your wind angle is less than 20 degrees. Boat speed along the medium blue line and dark blue line is mostly the same from 40 degrees, clocking around to 170 degrees (outside on top and right). Doesn't really matter a whole lot which direction you go, you'll always go the same speed. What's interesting about this graph is the yellow, orange, red lines, from about 110 degrees to 170 degrees. What this tells us is that the boat is disproportonately designed to go downwind, slightly off the wind (not "dead down wind" or DDW). On the west coast we call these "sleds" especially if they're light and the wind when strong enough will pick the boat out of the water and it planes line a motor boat TL;DR sailboats go faster downwind, but not directly with the wind, slightly off  Ok anyways, Here's the current situation. I am currently in first (red 1), there's a low pressure zone (orange/orangey-greenish) developing behind the fleet and moving below the rhumb line (red line, shortest route on a sphere between two points*). There's a (dark blue/medium blue) high pressure zone (red 2) that is moving south over the rhumb line and and is bending the wind around it. Eventually the wind is going to move so that my TWA or true wind angle is in a bad position, and I'm actually pointing away from the finish line. Eventually we're going to "round up" into the high pressure zone, wind speed will drop and we'll stop pointing at the finish line, at which point (red 3) everyone will change direction or "gybe" down, probably sort of near where the red 4 is click to embiggen  And then here's a close up of the top 5 people give or take, I am the pink boat shaped object, the weird red and green pie chart things are representations of the other boats at night; that's what sailboat navigation lights look like at night, I dunno, it's their artistic license. Looks way better during the day but whatever. Anyways there's a white semicircle painted on there, that's my own addition, to show (exaggerated) what a ~1770 mile radius circle might look like, and how DTF or distance to finish is calculated. I also threw a scale in there to help explain the... scale. The green lines are me just trying to measure other boat's COG or course over ground to understand why they are going faster/slower than me. click to embiggen  Basically my strategy right now is to cover whoever is moving in on my lead the fastest. As of moments ago a guy named jkwheeler just moved to the most efficient sail angle so I had to make an adjustment from ~129.5 TWA to ~125 TWA (true wind angle) to keep him from overtaking me in about 3 hours as it adds about 0.08nm/hr to his speed We'll see what happens overnight. This all depends on real time weather data so there could be a shift and I miss it while sleeping and lose my lead at any time. Someone I talked to recently mentioned "poopsocking" which is a term I hadn't heard in a couple years. Oh yeah and I am periodically tracking people's movements with a spreadsheet to track historical performance etc to keep on top of everyone. *Actually I haven't read the documentation to see if this is a rhumb line or a great circle line, but for now assume they're the same Hadlock fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Jul 4, 2020 |
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Jul 4, 2020 08:42
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So as I was writing that, JKwheeler made a course correction, he's now sailing at the ideal angle for max speed and also pointing better at the finish line. My lead on him dropped from about 0.25 to 0.15nm pretty quickly. Since the high pressure zone is descending on the race course, that's going to cause the wind closer to me to slow down, and cause my competitors below me/closer to the red rhumb line to be faster than me, effectively making me slower than everyone else. So I made a course correction from 255 to 258 to push me down towards the faster wind, and also more directly at the finish, at a small cost of ideal speed. Looks like around UTC 14:00-16:00 we'll finally have a major wind shift and gybe about then. That's about 8-10am pacific, and we'll see if I can be up and hang on to my lead at that point, or if I become the follower.
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Jul 4, 2020 09:19
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Dang I missed this, looks fun! Course record for an SC50 is a little under 9 days, but that was a very windy year. 10-14 days is more typical. What wind speeds are you seeing now?
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Jul 4, 2020 16:30
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Hadlock posted:I guess at this point this is sort of a Let's Play huh Cool stuff! The strategy side gets very spreadsheety very quickly...
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Jul 4, 2020 16:41
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I'm seeing about 8.6kts boat speed right now but we're about 50nm above the line which feels like a lotmeltie posted:Cool stuff! The strategy side gets very spreadsheety very quickly... Yeah there is a $1000 package of software called "expedition" that a lot of people use, streamlines this whole process update: The high pressure system, which both slows my wind (bad) and curves the wind in the direction I need it to (goodish) has moved down towards the line, and in front of me, which means we won't get the wind shift we needed, in time. Hopefully, if the new weather holds, we'll get an ok wind shift here in about 2 hours, and then when the weather model updates, it moves closer to us to give us the angle we need. Right now it's looking like the top 10 group is about to take a bath and have to pull way off our optimal point of angle to get out of there, before the low pressure system descends and all the good wind is below it. So not only did I effectively add 50 miles of distance to my 2200 mile race, but I'll have to add another 50 miles to stay in the fast wind to the south, and probably eat a 2 knot (out of ~9 knot) speed penalty to do it Oaxaca, which is partly owned by the regatta commodore, who I KNOW is using expedition software for this (he has a perpetual license and knows the guy who wrote/writes it) has been below the line for a while but recently moved above it early this morning, which is interesting At this point I don't know what everyone is waiting for, but most of the fleet seems to be moving up and to the right, so I'm prioritizing that without losing too much of my lead 
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jul 4, 2020 |
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Jul 4, 2020 18:14
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The high pressure zone continues to float just above us. We're stuck on the wrong side of the low pressure ridge, will probably have to slog through 9kts of wind for a couple of days and then pray we can cash out all this altitude nearer the finish for gains/payout. The #3 guy, sannico, just shot off to the moon, he might have oxygen deprivation, I can't see what he's going for up there, but there is some wind filling in, in about 7.5 hours, which will... push him further into the slow wind, with no good way to come back down. Currently sticking with my wingman, jkwheeler as Im holding steady at about 0.49nm away from him. I'd rather stick with #1 as he doesn't change course very often so it makes him fairly reliable to test small course changes and we're both in the same wind. I got panicky and tried cashing in some of my altitude to get into faster wind, that was dumb, I cashed in about 0.55nm DTF trailing of #1 for... looks like 16.6nm of downwind range, which keeps me in the same wind, but it's going to be awfully hard to reel back in that DTF I lost against #1 TL;DR probably gonna cruise on the same course for the next 12+ hours unless something significant happens 
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Jul 4, 2020 22:20
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Well at this point everything has gone horribly off the rails. I keep getting pushed further and further into the high pressure zone, causing me to slow down, causing me to point further into the People south of the line are just watching this train wreck in slow motion, hoping they don't get sucked in to the maelstrom, enjoying a good breeze and mostly pointing right down the rhumbline, willing to go a little slower and watch us crash and burn in slow motion. At this point I'm kind of stuck shooting for the moon, it's possible but not probable that the wind will somehow resolve itself and we'll be able to recover this but it's not looking good. 
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Jul 5, 2020 06:11
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Hadlock posted:Well at this point everything has gone horribly off the rails. I keep getting pushed further and further into the high pressure zone, causing me to slow down, causing me to point further into the Yeah, that's not looking great.
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Jul 5, 2020 13:00
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Weather model changed just before midnight last night, shows the Pacific High further developing + moving right in to the middle of the fleet. TL;DR wind above line: 5-8kts, wind below line: 11-17 kts I decided gently caress it, and port tacked a fleet of 250 boats and headed for winds, about 7 others followed suit. Cost me 1st to 24th place almost immediately, by morning I was in 75th place, right now I'm about 150th place. I'm only about 20nm behind first still, though. About 2/3rds of the fleet above the line are now on port tack Option B was to continue pinching into the high and both losing speed and VMG (velocity made good towards the finish line) Probably will gybe back here closer to midnight and lick my wounds
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Jul 6, 2020 01:18
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Still headed south, to my left that colored line is binder, he's in #94, we are only about 7nm apart, and then way to my south that arcing smiling, smirking mouth is Outlaw from germany, currently in first place. South of the line appears to have paid off in spades. He is ahead of me by about 26nm, which is uh, near 1%, which is less than 10% so that's something.
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Jul 6, 2020 05:18
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 16:29 |
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Slow motion train wreck continues Most of the fleet has moved south, at this point I'm #150, everyone who was in the top 10 a couple days ago now sits somewhere between 125 and 175  As you can see everyone is running south. The wind in this shot doesn't look too terrible, but if you zoom out a bit, and look at the fleet position now vs wind in 2.5 days:  You can see wind speeds are going to be 13-15kts below the line, while the pacific high continues to build north of the line, pushing wind speeds there below 9 knots which is at least 30% less wind, which is going to add up over the course of 5 days And then, if we zoom ahead 4 days out you can see the high pressure zone continuing to develop, strongly favoring the southern route  Hadlock posted:Here, below, 7 days later you can see the blue SLOW zone has moved south across the shortest route (rhumb line), so you'll want to move away from there, slightly, so you maintain good speed and don't get stuck for days with no wind. The fastest route has moved further south, and the best route sits somewhere south of the rhumb line. Probably should have taken my own loving advice Hadlock fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Jul 7, 2020 |
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Jul 7, 2020 06:24
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