Virtual ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships Regatta #32

Virtual ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships racing © SailX

SailX is running a series of regattas from May to July as the 'virtual' counterpart of ISAF YOUTH SAILING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP organized by Dublin Bay clubs this year.

During the virtual event over 250 regattas will take place, 5 each day at 0400, 1000, 1700, 1900 & 2130 GMT.

Last Sunday, on the virtual Dublin Bay, SailX ran one of the last regattas before the final Stage of the Virtual ISAF Youth Championships.

38 sailors, connected from 12 different countries across the world were at the start line to complete the 4-race regatta that finished in just over one hour.

This time users chose the 'sausage' course (start/A-mark/offset/downwind gate/A-mark/offset/Finish) but the choice of boat classes was fixed for this event: Laser, Catamaran, Skiff and 420.

First Race (Lasers) (watch the full replay of this race here)

A windy race with left side favoured (both more wind and favourable currents) and a small shift favoring the pin start made the fleet to spread nicely at the start line. No incidents at the start with the exception of jsn7821(USA) touching the start buoy and Snotty(UK) being OCS and retiring after some collisions trying to get back to the line to complete a proper start.

In the first upwind leg most of sailors sailed the left side (favoured), the advantage was for sailors banging the corner and choosing a risky aproach to the A-mark from port. That kind of scenarios are quite usual in SailX, causing crowded roundings at the 1st mark (see image of the approach).

It is therefore incredible that the whole fleet completed the rounding with only 3 boats penalized!. After the offset leg the leading positions were Robinhud(UK), IRL711(IRL), ProOC(USA) and mirrorking(UK). At that time (only 3 minutes after the start) wind had stabilized and there was no clear advantage in any side.

mirrorking(UK) completed a perfect downwind leg leeping the laser in 'planing' mode for a long part of the run and getting a very big advantage at the downwind gate folowed by Percha(ARG), IRL711, rsparer(IRL) and Shamazo(USA). Unfortunate IRL711 had a collision with mirrorking in the gate area, both boats on starboard but mirrorking was upwind while IRL711 was still approaching the gate on the run, the incident was solved with a mere spin by IRL711 to exonerate (do you imagine what would have happened in real life with boats running full speed :)? ).

The end of the race happened with no other incidents. A sudden shift in the last leg caused a change of course announced to all boats in the offset-mark to signal the change of the finish line.

Final positions for mirrorking(UK), Shamazo(USA), Percha(ARG) and jsn7821(USA). A nice race!.

Second Race (Catamarans) (watch the full replay of this race here)

24 catamarans at the start line. Uniform wind in the field and a little shift at the start caused the typical congestion at the boat-end start (with catamarans, bad tackers, sailors prefer to get a boat start to have 'control' of the fleet to port). Race comittee used an I-flag for the start and sailors complied taking no risks of OCS.

The start was won by Volker(ARG) and krussa(EST) although both boats were quite far from the boat end and had other boats (with worse starts) controlling them.

Approaching the A-mark from port with some spare room was the tactic of the day and too many boats chose the to do the samecausing a cascade of 'Room-to-tack' hails to avoid the leaders on starboard.

Those boats forced to tack to starboard but falling short of the mark would loose many places, leasson learned you need more spare room.

At the downwind gate some boats the wind shift was important favouring the left buoy but some boats decided to go the other rounding less favoured but saving them an extra tack on the next upwind (to understand this decision you have to have raced cats).

Looser(ITA) and TheNeilage(IRL) rounded the gate first, each one choosing a different rounding. Eventually taking the bad buoy was the right decision and looser got a big gap leading the rest of the fleet.

At the finish the honour positions were looser(ITA), Volker(ARG), Okole(Hawaii), TheNeilage(IRL) and Flash(BRA).

Third Race (Skiffs) (watch the full replay of this race here)

30 boats at the start line. SKIFFs are popular among SailX sailor, the virtual boat behaving as a mix between 29er, Musto and 18ft. The conditions were windy (a big risk of capsize) and favouring clearly the pin start. A P-start this time and very clean one. No boat was OCS or penalized!.

With no clear indication of the favoured side the fleet split in two groups initially. What it seemed a small advantage to the right side during the 1st minutes changed later and eventually leveling both sides.

The upwind mark was rounded first by Nor300(NOR), closely followed by mirrorking(UK) and TheNeilage(IRL). Those positions were kept during the first run where the leading sailors didn't take too many risks and avoided capsizes (the same cannot be said for the rest of the fleet, some of the boats chose to push her luck and got wet).

At the finish line the positions were unchanged.

Fourth Race (420s) (watch the full replay of this race here)

Standard wind conditions for the 23 boats starting the last race. As usual the committee placed the start line with a small advantage for boats starting near the pin, to avoid pile-ups at the boat end.

SailX 420s are modelled in a (artificial) way not to loose when they tack. The idea is to promote the tack fights and the shift-playing (even a small wind shift has to be considered!).

After a very tactical upwind leg that produced small gaps the fleet approached the A-mark closely packed. And a nice pile-up was in show. Again winners were the boats who took less risks giving some spare room and avoiding the pile-up.

ProOC(USA) rounded first, followed by greg77515(UK) abd Robinhud(UK).

A small offset leg allowed users to hoist the spinnakers and round nicely the offset mark to start the running leg.

Rounding the downwind gate a typical scenario: a boat wins the inside to other boat IN the 3-boats-length area but when the boats 1st 'touched' the area thew were NOT overlapped. Even if you get 'inside' in that case you have no 'room rights' (Rule 18.2). In this instance rockin2 can't ask for room to Robinhud!

At the end the race was won by ProOC(USA) followed by greg77515(UK) and Robinhud(UK). Hudos for rockin2(USA) who managed to finish 4th after spinning for the incident.

Full race classifications can be found here