Another Wednesday Night Rum Race

DUE TO ISSUES WITH PHOTOBUCKET ALL OF MY CONTENT, PICS OTHER BLOG POSTS HAVE BEEN MOVED TO journalofmicrotom.blogspot.com. PLEASE GO TO MY OTHER SITE TO SEE ALL PICS.

First off, thanks to my friend Jason for showing up and helping out. Great having you on the boat. If your willing to crew again I will supply beverages.

Last nights race was a little more tactical than my past attempts at sailing the course on an east wind. At first I was concerned about too much wind. Earlier in the afternoon it had been up to 18 MPH with gusts up 25+ MPH but the breeze was quickly fading as the evening came progressed. 

We have a 30 minute start window and I was going to go over the line right at 6:00 PM to maximize my wind. I fumbled the start a little bit trying to jibe and get wing on wing with the main on the starboard side and the mizzen to port. My logic (and I don't know if its right) was that the wind was ENE on the starboard side and this way both sails would be fully exposed to the wind. Also the main could be flown forward of the main mast. This worked well and we made good time to the mark while enjoying a cold beverage. We monitored the GPS seeing constant speeds in the high 6 - to low 7 MPH. Our peak speed hit 8.5 MPH.

As we rounded the mark I failed to notice the wind shifted slightly further out of the north. I was on a starboard tack going north when I should have rounded the mark and tried to head strait back to the start/finish. I might not have been able to point high enough to pull it off but I definitely should have tried. It would have been a better course than the one I sailed.

I started thinking about this more and more. Finally I decided that I would analyze it carefully. I looked at my GPS. Below is picture of the screen. The triangle on the left is the race course. (The triangle on the right is just sailing after the race was over.)

 

I took the GPS positions and entered them into Google Earth using the mark and path functions. From their I could see the total distance I sailed vs. the distance sailed by the more experienced racers in the club sailing sloops.  (evil Precision 23s and S2 7.9s)

 

First thing I noticed was that I sailed an extra 8/10ths of a mile. Thats a 24% increase in distance. My down wind leg was 15:30 and calcuates to an average speed of  6.8 MPH. That leaves me with 26:38 to cover 2.58 miles. Which means I was traveling 5.8 MPH on my two tacks trying to get back to the start/finish. (Are you still with me?)

So let theorize that I rounded the mark and headed strait back. (That's a lofty goal to hope that I could point that high but I am theorizing). That means I would have had to maintained a speed just under 4 MPH to complete the course in the same time. This might have been possible.

Ok, last one. If I take 8:30 off of my time I would be competitive with the fastest boats. To do that I would have have rounded the mark and gone strait back to the start finish at an average speed of 5.8 MPH.

So my conclusion is that if I figure out how to point high and maintain fast speeds I may be able to pick up some additional time. And does anyone's head hurt besides mine?