Spring Cup race 1

We planned to have all three a GPS tracker on board. Sadly one F16 crew arrived late and never got the 3rd GPS tracker we brought without. My tracker decided to perform as planned till 10 min after the start and then quite. I can see all the little movements on sure and the path I took through the boat park in high res detail but no more of the racing than 10 minutes of the very first race. Pretty meger when considering we were out for 3 races and 4.5 hours.

A real pitty I was absolutely sure I had put new batteries in it. But apparently it ran out of juice.

Geert how is your track ?

Wouter

Here is my GPS track.

Wind s were lightish during the track show exact when in the red segments here is was light to medium. To give an idea crew was sitting to leeward and in front of the mean beam whil skipper was on the mainbeam. I would guess between 4 and 8 knots of wind (and varying). (5 to 8 knots = 9.25 and 14.8 km/h)

Take note that the start was at the left upper corner. You can see me do 4 downwind legs under spinnaker to get to the start and than see me do halve a leg of upwind work before my GPS unit shut itself of. I now think that I accidently left the backlight on; this saps the batteries. All in all me GPS worked for about 1.5 hours before going done. I removed the hour of movements in the boat park.

Speeds; these are colour coded : Blue is below 9 km/u, light blue is between 9km/h and 15 km/h. Red is above 15.km/h

1 km/h is 0.54 knots.

The wind out to the start was a little variable and could changing direction a little. But All in all I made a few 90 degree gibes to the start. On the 3rd spi leg I found more wind and here we quickly accellerated to the max speed of the track that was 17.8 km/h than the wind dropped a little again.

Also noteworthy is the fact that my first upwind leg is as good as 180 degree opposite to my fore last downwind leg. This suggests tacking and gibing angles are identical and 90 degrees.

When close to the other boats we felt we had decent speed with respect to the F18's although we pointed just a little lower to the F18's. This is however a often reported facet of the Taipan F16's. I could point as high as the F18's but then it felt like the speed dropped out of the Taipan. She really does like to be footed a little bit. So indeed for a mark you could well point up a few degree to clear it but for speed and max vmg a Taipan sailors does need to foot off and go for speed rather than pointing. Other F16 hull designs differ from this a little I'm told. Under spinnaker we sailed a little hotter angles than the F18's but we arrived at the downwind mark at about the same time or just a little behind. Sadly Harry and I parked the boat a few times to reattach stuff and right it after a capsize so our results do not at all reflect the comments above. I also must add that I really noticed that I could speed up when the other boats were near. I'm really out of touch with keeping a proper upwind angle and to optimize downwind angle to speed. I noticed that it really helped to be close to others and steer to that. A few times we found ourselfs alone on the course, we did tack away a few times, and our speed really suffered then.

So next time I'll just follow the leaders around and just forget about dirty air. It was quite apparent that we suffer more in clear air due to our inability to find good angles than we could ever suffer of dirty air.

The only legs were I did find good speed on my own was on the downwind legs. So I need a serious amount of upwind training to get the F16 to show its potential.

with respect to the GPS track; right after crossing the start line the tracking stopped so now more data is available from the real racing. I'm hoping that Geerts track is in full order.

Wouter

Geert appears to have the complete tracks of the first 2 races but only part of the last race.

The shifts in wind direction and wind strengths make it difficult to see much in the combined plot. It is just one big mess of lines. So I've filtered the individual races and individual laps.

Clearly the whole first race (out of 3 in total) lasted for about 2 hours with lap times of about 40 minutes (deducting the pre-start sequence) 28 min, 23, min and 24 min. Winds were lightest except some brief moments of medium winds. 5 to 10 knots

One can also clearly see that the wind shifted about quite considerably. In this one race both sides of the course became favoured in different parts of the race. Also we comparing upwind angles between laps one can see that the upwind angles could change be 30 degrees per lap. There was also land nearby and this probably cause the significant changes in windspeeds. I was personally quite challenged by this obstacle course, coming from a shore based club where the winds are more constant in direction and speed. Geert and Raymond did alot better.

First race 1

(speed data has been averaged over 1 min. (track log contained a position each 2 seconds so 30 points are averaged into one speed. This to get the spikes out.)

Here the complete race 1 (blue is below 10km/h, light blue between 10 and 15 km/h , red above 15 km/h)

Here lap 1 :

Here lap 2 :

Here lap 3 :

Here lap 4 :

Wouter

.

.

.

.

Yahoo ! Stealth F16 time for me !

Due to various yet unforeseen crew make-up changes, I will find myself racing on a Stealth F16 this weekend. Sadly I will score two or three DNC's with my own boat but I'm quite anxious to do a thorough testing of the Stealth F16 design under race conditions. And under the watchful eye of a good skipper as well; at least way better than I am. And I get to do the things I like most; crewing. This will tank my own Typhoon F16 scoring in the spring cup of course but one has to break a few eggs to make an omelet right ?

Wouter

A few fellow club members showed up last sunday to watch the racing and Olaf made a few nice pictures. Sadly Geert and Raymond had already gone down to the water line. So they are not in these pics. Of course the guys that are in the pics missed the first start by 10 to 15 minutes so ... Geert was right ! Bart and Lonneke's Stealth F16 was parked some 10 boat rows further and thus managed to stay out of the pictures as well.

So all pics are of my boat !

And I still want to change a few things on it. One of those is my sailnumber. # 1 is a little bit wishful thinking for me don't you think. It was an emergency number as we could make that out of sail tape. NED 243 is a little harder to do !

You can see how sunny is was that day and hot as well. For that time of year.

.

.