Sailing in tide..quiz.

This race officer? The one that takes all that into account, love to meet her.


Edit, so the next thing we need to use your magic tool for is that, say it's a lay line approach with the adverse tide just a degree to weather of it. Then Boat A sails a normal course, but Boat B squeezes two degrees up to nose into or slightly present the leeside of the nose into it.

What happens then?

There lyeth the crux to earlier discussion

Edited by iGRF - 03 Oct 17 at 1:21pm

Well what normally happens, you make the mark and the boat/board that doesn't react has to double tack and if as it so often happens, it's a starboard layline then he's screwed. Double screwed because he continues to get knocked and you get lifted but then it doesn't work so could never happen according to your logic.

Originally posted by mozzy Almost, but you've called the wrong end of the line.  Maybe you're accounting for the inevitable pile up at the committee boat; but I didn't actually say there were any other boats, just simply which end was favoured.

Originally posted by mozzy Originally posted by iGRF one of the other reasons for choosing the port end, is the liability that going right will cause possible overstand scenarios at the windward mark. Just seen this. So your answer to over standing the windward mark is to start further left?  How would starting on the left possibly make calling the layline easier?  The answer to that may be, that if you start port end you won't be first to the layline, so you can use the leading boats to judge when you should tack. Not going to win many races that way though!

As I said, it's not a complete scenario, you haven't quantified the line length, nor length of the beat, but assuming it's a big fleet with a long line and say half mile beat, then the left has more options than the right unless you somehow manage to blast clean from the pack off the line which would be very unlikely from the starboard end for all the reasons you cite.

Mainly because the left will over the course of the race become the middle.

OK I've now given this considerable thought,

First I'm going to concede in your circumstance (If I'm right you're quite a handy RS200 jockey with at least one championship win to your tally and you're a Hayling man, so not entirely without tidal credentials) which in that particular boat (In which I've only had very limited experience, but enough to tell me that going too high would slow the boat significantly more than any tidal gain would exacerbate, which isn't the case with an 18 kilo board, or even a 50 kilo single hander, so forget the pinching it's irrelevant to you and you'd never have experienced it.

But,

Second I'm going to call you on your assumptions regarding the tidal lift off that line and in this instance I'm going to quote back at you the conveyor belt assumption which will lift all the boats on starboard off the line, but not in the same way an actual wind shift would, i.e the relation of the boat sailing angles will not alter. They'll still point as they would in relation to the true wind angle but the inter boat relationship angle would not change as it would in a wind shift, so a faster boat off the Port end could still make enough ground to tack across slower starboard boats from the starboard end. The vector they all make good however would follow your assumptions.

Edited by iGRF - 03 Oct 17 at 4:57pm