Virtual Regatta/Vendee Globe

[Upnorth]

Wondered if anyone here was trying to take part in the VR version of the Vendee Globe. I have done several races on the Virtual Regatta site including the Vendee in 2012. I quite enjoyed them. However this time, the geeks have been at work and completely messed up the game. It won't run on most of my computers, is very slow, and this evening gave me duff heading info that lost me 12,000 places. There is nowhere to do anything about it. They just send an automated reply to emails, and they appear to have shut down their forum. Very poor experience.
Mind you the Vendee Globe official site for the real race isn't much better - takes an age to download the race tracking maps, and again won't load onto regular computer hardware.
Sorry having a grumpy moment. Back to real sailing I think.

 

[MissFitz]

Oh thank you, so glad to hear it's not just me! I did the last Vendee on their site & it was great, easy to use & really good fun (until I left my other half in charge for a few days & he ran me aground). This time I can't make head or tail of the controls, I can only see four boats in the fleet &, as you say, it's been malfunctioning or not functioning at all for much of the last 36 hours. I'm feeling particularly bitter as I jumped in & paid my £25 or whatever for all the bells & whistles before checking out the site, just assumed it would be the same as last time. And yes, the race tracker is rubbish also. Very disappointing, had been really looking forward to getting to grips with all the weather routing etc this time.

 

[Javelin]

As is usual the servers just can't cope with 100,000 + folk online at the same time so it crashes.
However 24hr on things have settled down for me at least.
Currently in 524th place or there abouts. (was in 10,000 place a few hours ago)

Its a long, long race and given the parking area's on the way round there's plenty of opportunity to catch up.
If you're in it look up "Javelin GBR562" and say Hi.

in theory there's over 2000 British boats racing so there must be a few who haunt these pages.

 

[rwoofer]

I did it last time and found it highly informative and addictive. I don't like to admit this, but it started to interrupt work and life. I found myself putting in a crucial gybe in the middle of a board meeting or interrupting dinner to change sails etc. etc.

For that reason I decided I didn't want to do it this time round.....

 

[Neil_Y]

I find sailonline a better platform, they haven't managed to partner with some of the bigger events but the sailing options are more realistic, or at least they were last time I played with it.
http://sailonline.org/

 

[Javelin]

Virtual regatta has changed quite a bit since last time.
The winds are interpolated and seem to be updated on a far more regular basis.
Apparently the routing software that was so popular doesn't work anymore so it seems to be far more less of a software battle.
Its still clunky in places but overall I think its a better game now.

Managed to run aground this afternoon whilst I was at work, my fault entirley but have now dropped from in the top 1000 to just under 10000.

What is remarkable is that the real boats are right with us so they've got the polars and winds pretty close to real life.

 

[TallBuoy]

If you are still in the top 10000 you must be spending a lot of time tweaking your heading!

Yesterday I decided to head further west to avoid the Canaries and dropped 60000 places

SlickNick is the name.

 

[Javelin]

The ranking is pants.
Currently the distance criteria is based on a route right across Africa so its pretty meaningless until we're almost out of the Atlantic.

I'm stuck too far east and needing to get west so my position is artificially high.

 

[tsekul]

I have been giving the virtual regatta a go and am really enjoying it. I have stuck with the free version with no add ons. I am also not going with the routing recommendations I am just using passage weather and magicseaweed. It is pretty addictive ! I was doing quite well until I saw it was going to be much windier to the south east of the canaries so decided to go east, bad mistake went from about 10,000 to 160,000. Even though the winds were stronger I couldn't sail to the best angle. been trying to catch up ever since.

I went between fuerta and lazarote....... or at least I thought I had, got up in the night for a bit of relieve, and thought i'd check and it all looked fine. woke up in the morning to discover I had run aground on the tip of Fuerta,

slowly crawling my way back up to about 50,000. Sunday evening now and the next 3 days are going to be tricky if I can stay in wind I hope to catch a ride on the next low.

 

[Javelin]

tsekul, I added you to my friends list.
You're doing really well considering you've not got all the paid for stuff.
If you click on my boat you can see we have taken a similar route so we suffered pretty much the same issues along the way.

As you say the next few days will be tricky and I expect to lose a few 1000 places but its a long way......

Javelin GBR562

 

[tsekul]

Wow very similar tracks.
You can see my gybe between maidera and canaries was my undoing , it's a long way to go