Onto the final race of 2016, the all time favorite to Hobart. The wx is pretty simple, a fast downwind stretch along the coast, a lighter reaching bit across Bass Strait, and another fast downwind bit alongside Tasmania. Bass Strait is certainly the least predictable, and likely decisive.
All posts by outlaw
VMC revisited
Hi, I’m going to give the concept of Velocity Made Course, or VMC in short, another look. Hopefully easier to understand, let’s go.
It doesn’t get easier, only faster
Four years of boat outlaw in SOL. Let’s look back at the past and current editions of my favourite race.
Her name is Rio
BA to Rio is neat short ocean race, and had been on my todo list for a long time. It is a bit too coastal for my tastes, so I only made my go decision very late.
Boston to Newport in high resolution
In my last post I’ve covered SailOnline’s new weather model, WRF with a 0.05°x0.05° grid. Now we’re going to race it from Boston to Newport. First a look at the big picture. A low pressure system has formed over Lake Ontario. It moves south across New Jersey and then up the coast towards Newfoundland.
WRF first impressions
Quality gribs are the lifeblood of weather navigation. And while I’m still exploring the new GFS data, the SailOnline tech team has surprised us by implementing the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) for virtual racing. The first test race is Boston to Newport, on a .05°x.05° grid with 1h timesteps. Let’s see how it looks.
Isochrones – the BWR topic
In this post I will talk about the routing process. I will use BWR (Bluewater Racing) to generate isochrones. Isochrones are to me the major reason to use routing software.
Cyclones and VMC, a thought experiment
Here is one more example to illustrate VMC, and how targets change. We start with a cyclone. A perfectly well behaved cyclone.
The storm just sits in place and maintains it’s strength. It’s not even that unrealistic, the tropical storm near Madagascar in SWR Leg 2 behaved like this, as do coastal effects. Now imagine that you have to sail a loop around the cyclone as fast as possible.
Sailing to Tasmania
I’m ending my SOL year with the Boxing Day Classic, the first half of the Tasman Double. A night start in Sydney, across Bass Strait and round Tasman Island, before steering into Hobart. Tasman Island is of course the relevant routing goal.
As a rule for the Southern Ocean in general, and the whole Tasman Sea / NZL area in particular, forecasts tend to be less then reliable. In last year’s edition I split from the main group in Bass Strait, and by sheer luck won the light air lottery. And then there’s my favorite, Sail Fiji. This year’s forecast was soooo bad. Anyway the forecast for this race is… amazingly stable. Ok.
An SOTP race to San Nicolas
Just before the start, I checked out the final Sprint race of the year, a quick downwind trip off California. The big pressure gradient looked interesting, and the Class 40 takes off with some wind… A good opportunity for some SOTP fun!