Windward / leeward vs Olympic

[roblpm]

I am fairly new to racing on my Parker 275 lift keel on the Forth.

Have done about 20 races which have mainly been windward leeward courses. We are not that fast upwind and due to incompetence a good result is say half to two thirds of the way down the fleet with a good few last places in between.

Now I have noticed that on a reaching leg we are pretty fast.

This Wednesday the wind was all over the place. The race officer set an Olympic course. We only had 2 of us so weren't going to use the spinnaker anyway. The others had trouble on the spinnaker leg due to shifting winds. Result, we were 6th out of 16. Pretty good for us. Maybe the lack of crew weight helped in the light airs too.

So why is it not normal to run Olympic courses (which I think means a triangle followed by up and down?)?

I could obviously ask at the club but only just thought of it.

What do other clubs do??

 

[Resolution]

None of the experts have answered (are they all out racing?) so I will leap in with a couple of observations.

1. Windward/leeward courses are easier on the race officers as one less mark to lay or to move every time the wind shifts.
2. W/L courses provide a choice at the windward mark of which jibe to set off on, another valuable judgement call to be made. More crew routines to be practised. Less risk of a procession to the next mark.

 

[Keen_Ed]

Olympics now use trapezoid courses. 4 beats, 4 runs, 2 short reaches.

 

[Keen_Ed]

Advantage of WW/LW is more passing lanes.

 

[roblpm]

I think what you are all saying is that there is more skill involved in a ww lw course! Which is why we did well on Wednesday in a procession!! Its just that compared to the fleet our fastest point of sail seems to be a reach, dont know why but we always catch up if there is a reaching leg!!

 

[dunedin]

A keen-ed says, the "triangle / sausage" course, that is sometimes referred to (by older sailors as an "Olympic course" is no longer used for the Olympics.
But it is perhaps a good course for club racing as it gives a bit more variety of sailing for the competitors.

I wonder if the fixation with windward / leeward only courses is one factor in reducing racing turnouts (for traditional style boats - clearly different for asymmetric skiffs which windward leeward is better suited)

 

[VRwind]

Windward/Leeward is so much easier on the race committee. Just one mark to reset if wind shifts dramatically. The newer Olympic course specification can take a long time to sail in light air. Clubs I've raced at use all sorts of configurations. Check with your racing director on adding more variety in course set-ups.

 

[savageseadog]

....................clearly different for asymmetric skiffs which windward leeward is better suited)

I don't think I agree with that, not in my experience.

Tactically the run on windward leeward allows a choice of running or reach-gybe-reach at various angles with a choice of sails.

 

[Birdseye]

This Wednesday the wind was all over the place. The race officer set an Olympic course. We only had 2 of us so weren't going to use the spinnaker anyway. The others had trouble on the spinnaker leg due to shifting winds. Result, we were 6th out of 16. Pretty good for us. Maybe the lack of crew weight helped in the light airs too.

?

More than the shape of the course I suspect you did well by not using the spinnaker. The less skilled you are, the more dangerous it is to fly a spinny and the more likely you are to cock it up. We race in two scenarios, either in a constricted area behind the barrage of outside round channel marks . I never use the spinny inside the barrage because the runs are short and time and time again I have seen competitors cock up either hoisting, dropping or more likely jibing a spinny. I' ve won races by not flying one when everyone else nd before I learned that lesson I have lost races because we werent anything like slick enough to hoist and drop in a short time.

If you are fast on a reach but not on a beat then I would suspect old tired sails. Shape is more critical the closer you are to the wind. You could also be oversheeting or pointing too high.

 

[flaming]

There's also an element of "horses for courses".

When you're racing OD, it's just about crew skill and tactics - and this is often why, as Keen ed says, a lot of classes have moved away from triangle courses, as it was felt that the reaching legs were quite procesional.

When racing handicap - especially IRC - your boat is handicapped based on its full performance spectrum, and there's plenty of evidence that ww/lw courses make certain boats uncompetitive that are fantastic offshore boats, where reaching is quite common. The J105 is a great example of this. Very difficult to win with on a ww/lw course, has won pot after pot offshore.

So a lot of race officers like to throw in a triangle course to give the reaching machines a bit of a chance, but it doesn't really work as it's only 1/4 of the distance (roughly) and you still have half of the race upwind, which is where reaching machines suffer the most.
The other reason to have a reaching mark for cruiser/racers is that the reach/reach gybe in a decent breeze with a symmetrical kite is one of the hardest maneuvers to pull off. Really sorts the men from the boys, if you can execute that well you can still make places in most average fleets. Less so at the front of the fleet though.

 

[Kerenza]

As a sometime race officer I was intrigued by the recent extreme 40 series here in Cardiff. Prompted mainly by the need to keep the start/finish at the sponsor and corporate narrow end of the bay, the RO set a reaching start line with essentially a windward leeward course some 300 m away, sometimes requiring a further reach leg before more sausages. Struck me as something to investigate for the future.

 

[GrahamD]

As a sometime race officer I was intrigued by the recent extreme 40 series here in Cardiff. Prompted mainly by the need to keep the start/finish at the sponsor and corporate narrow end of the bay, the RO set a reaching start line with essentially a windward leeward course some 300 m away, sometimes requiring a further reach leg before more sausages. Struck me as something to investigate for the future.

Reaching starts are now a prominent feature of Americas Cup racing, as seen in Portsmouth. I still think that windward starts are the fairest way for more mixed and larger fleets to start a race, with the added bonus that the fleet doesn't all arrive at the first mark at the same time like a Formula 1 pileup! There were six boats racing at Portsmouth....how many Extreme 40s at Cardiff?

 

[Kerenza]

I think there were 8 here in Cardiff, a similar number to the IRC and NHC fleets on a Tuesday night. In this wind direction our W/L distance is around 450m, which means the reaching start would be appreciably longer to the sauceage than the present start to the windward mark.

 

[savageseadog]

There's also an element of "horses for courses".

When you're racing OD, it's just about crew skill and tactics - and this is often why, as Keen ed says, a lot of classes have moved away from triangle courses, as it was felt that the reaching legs were quite procesional.

When racing handicap - especially IRC - your boat is handicapped based on its full performance spectrum, and there's plenty of evidence that ww/lw courses make certain boats uncompetitive that are fantastic offshore boats, where reaching is quite common. The J105 is a great example of this. Very difficult to win with on a ww/lw course, has won pot after pot offshore.

So a lot of race officers like to throw in a triangle course to give the reaching machines a bit of a chance, but it doesn't really work as it's only 1/4 of the distance (roughly) and you still have half of the race upwind, which is where reaching machines suffer the most.
The other reason to have a reaching mark for cruiser/racers is that the reach/reach gybe in a decent breeze with a symmetrical kite is one of the hardest maneuvers to pull off. Really sorts the men from the boys, if you can execute that well you can still make places in most average fleets. Less so at the front of the fleet though.

I took part in a regatta a year or two ago where the courses included very long reaching legs on the triangles which gave the majority of the local large J109 fleet a massive advantage with their sprit flown asymmetrics.

 

[flaming]

I took part in a regatta a year or two ago where the courses included very long reaching legs on the triangles which gave the majority of the local large J109 fleet a massive advantage with their sprit flown asymmetrics.

J109 is not a reaching machine, it's an IRC machine that's quick upwind. It's only real weak point is downwind, as it can't sail as deep as similar IRC boats with symmetrical kites. So yes, they love a good triangle, as it's the only time that their 20% bigger kite is working properly, but they won't be planing or anything.

105 is a totally different kettle of fish. I've been passed on a reaching leg by a 105 like we were standing still. We were back in front by the next windward mark though. And they owe us time for that reaching potential.