All posts by kroppyer

I'm a Dutch guy, sailing regattas IRL, and ocean races online. I study computer science, where I learn about routing algorithms.

Exploring SPINNACER 1.1

SPINNACER (SOL Polar Inspector, Nautical Navigator And Calculator to Enhance Racing) is a java program that should help its users understand the polars (as used by sailonline.org) better, and performing (more accurate) calculations, e.g. for setting DCs. The “NN” part in SPINNACER is still in development, polar inspector and calculator are available :)

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Wisdom of the Crowd

A race report on race #691 – Tokyo to San Francisco 2014

I started of as if it were a practice race, but soon we reached open ocean and I had no idea what to do. Luckily there were lots of boats around me who knew. I checked the wx slider and decided that the boats going south were probably right. I followed them. Every evening I tried to predict what the boats around me would do, and set DCs to keep me in the group. I wasn’t always right (example, I tacked about 2 hours too soon, thinking the winds were turning more than they actually did), and often ended up a bit too far north or south. I lost some hours to the leader in this process.

Here you see me (red) tacking too soon.
Here you see me (red) tacking too soon.

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