Racing News!

Three boats participated in and completed last weekend’s John Quitzau Memorial Race around Moresby. The race was a combination of 2 very fast legs and one very slow .

• Gazelle set the fastest time for leg 1 with an average speed of 5.8 knots

• Whiteshell set the fastest time for leg 2 with an average speed of 6.08 knots

• Gazelle set the fastest time for leg 3 at 1.68 knots.  Since this is under 2 knots, this leg is excluded from PHRF results.

PHRF results

The race to the second time point was very close with Gazelle coming in 1st with a time of 11:37:00.  Carib came in 2nd, 59 seconds later, and Whiteshell came in 3rd , 3 seconds later.

As a trophy race, Mike takes home the John Quitzau Memorial Trophy.

Today’s course took us to Shute Reef and return.  Kermit, Carib and Gadgets started but Kermit dropped out early, leaving Carib and Gadgets to finish the race.  The promised winds of 10 knots gusting to 15 came through, and the rains stayed away, to make good racing conditions.

Carib took the first leg to Shute reef at an average speed of 2.8 knots (lots of tacking – speed over ground was likely double that), and 4 minutes faster than Gadgets.  On the home stretch, Gadgets set the pace with a speed of 5.4 knots and 5 minutes faster than Carib, and also coming in 1st .  Carib was only 47 seconds behind.

Under PHRF, Carib picked up 12 minutes on Gadgets, to take 1st.  For the winter series, Carib solidifies his position in 1st, Gadgets remains in 2nd, and Windfall continues in 3rd.

Under full handicap, Carib picked up only 4.8 minutes on Gadgets, enough to take 1st place.  Series positions are the same as under PHRF.

Yesterday’s race was changed to Twice around UN and SFB. Conditions were cloudy, but apparent winds from the south of 6 to 6 knots were consistent, making for an short and interesting race.

Raw results

Gadgets took the lead early on and kept it for the race, with The Boat right behind in 2nd and Windfall (time adjusted for starting boat) in 3rd. On individual legs,

Gadgets set the best time for legs 1 and 3

The Boat was about 10 seconds faster than Gadgets to take leg 2, and about 2 ½ minutes faster than Windfall to take leg 4.

The Boat came in 8 1/4 minutes after Gadgets, and Windfall came in 8 minutes after The Boat.

Fandango and Jacana are not currently participating in the series standings but results are shown (will be excluded for trophy purposes). Fandango came in 5th  (interim times not reported) and Jacana (Jacana did not report time, so estimate only).

 PHRF results

The Boat picked up 12 minutes on Gadgets to take 1st place.  Gadgets came in 2nd , and Carib picked up 7.4 minutes on Windfall to take 3rd place.  Windfall takes 4th.

 There are 3 races so far in the winter series.  For the series, Carib’s strong showing in the first race and good points in this one has put it into 1st for the series.  Gadgets picks up 2nd place, and Windfall 3rd.  The points spread is still pretty tight so should be a lot of jockeying for 1st place before the series is over.

 Handicap (golf results)

Even with a higher handicap at 224 (instead of 190), The Boat picks up enough time to beat Gadgets by 1 minutes to take 1st place.  Gadgets come in 2nd.  Carib picks up 8 minutes on Windfall to take 3rd place.

 The series ranking is the same as PHRF with Carib in 1st, Gadgets in 2nd, and Windfall in 3rd.

 A word about interim time points

Experience to dates shows that the threshold for excluding slow legs is low enough not to be triggered, so the need for interim time points only comes into play if a race is called before complete.  However it does give useful information on your performance by leg.

 Some words about the course

Nice to have winds all the way and to get back in time for lunch

Not racing into the wind on a shorter course definitely helped Gadgets, but does takes a lot of the strategy and suspense out of “whatever it is we do that we call racing but really isn’t”, It’s mostly about squeezing every last bit of performance out the boat…

Making a decision on which course to race is tricky – nice to get consensus but that it not really practical.  Suggest we have a rule like a majority decide.