Guest Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 [ I'm using Nessie's login cos it was there ... ] In case you doubted whether good gear, practice, and a regular team help to win races ... Attached is a wee graph I made from our racetrack results ... it is very illuminating. It also illustrates a story about a bunch of newbies being supported to learn one of the most complex pastimes I know of. In the graph the purple Xs are individual race results, the blue diamonds are 10-race averages, and the blue line is more heavily averaged data. The left hand side of the graph, with the grey overlay, is the data from the "ZZ Top", as she was called before we purchased her at the beginning of 2007. We had only sailed at a 4-day learn to sail course in Opua and chartered a 32-footer in the Marlborough Sounds over Easter in 2006 (which was almost entirely motoring with no sails up) when we purchased ZZ Top, because we thought it looked like a nice boat. We were so ignorant, and were extremely lucky and well-advised to purchase such a superb all-round boat. For the summer of 06/07 we sailed with Bob McVeigh on Montego Bay III as crew, because we were too scared to take a Young 11 out if there were whitecaps. Mark Gordon, the previous owner, very kindly offered to coach a bunch of newbies through the winter series in 2007, and then after that we jumped on a steep learning curve through summer 2008. We had lots of help from some very generous and patient folks at RPNYC. I remember, when we had owned the boat for several months, going to Mike Calkoen (owner/skipper of Flying Boat) in his shop and asking him about a rope at the bottom of the mast that I couldn't work out the purpose of. With a straight face he identified it as a cunningham and wasn't even slightly condescending while explaining what it was for. Lots of other good people with varying expertise (but much more than ours!) came out to help us and teach us stuff. Prior to this we'd had an obviously erroneous idea that social environment of yacht clubs was dominated by snobbery and cliques. Not so at RPNYC. By the end of 2008 we were starting to get it together as a crew, and improving. Some of the wise old heads looked at our sails and said they needed updating. We got some new North sails in early 2009, and then for the regatta also had Casper and Booboo (they have real names too but this is crew.org so they won't be needed) join us on mainsheet and tactics. The great steep launch of the blue diamonds shows clearly what happened: suddenly we were sailing the boat well with good sails and trim, and learning lots from having these guys teaching us at the same time. We won the RPNYC regatta on both Club and PHRF that year. After that there's a clear pattern. Early every summer we decide on a regatta crew who we try to keep on similar positions and we practice a few extra days apart from racing. In winter we mix it up, placing people in unusual positions so they learn what happens on the rest of the boat and how their job interacts. In summer, the blue diamond curve goes up, in winter is goes down. Most summers it goes higher than before as we build on previous performance. For the 2011-2012 season we were Div 1 season champs on PHRF and Club, and tied on IRC with Andiamo who got us on countback. http://cv-sail.blogspot.co.nz/ The graph beautifully illustrates how we've improved with practice and experience. What a brilliant thing to have all that Racetrack data freely available, that must be a great deal of work going on behind the scenes to get all that data in there -- thanks to all who send in the data from their clubs after racing and those on the racetrack end who put in into the database there. Link to post Share on other sites
Atom Ant 0 Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 Excellent! Yes big ups to MarkM for all his hard work on race track. Good on you for sharing and well done! Link to post Share on other sites
Kiteroa 8 Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 Racetrack is great! It's like PHRF except it's fair and correct. Will be really interesting to see where WT features after a few races. Hopefully she's not a pig. Link to post Share on other sites
Atom Ant 0 Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 Racetrack is great! It's like PHRF except it's fair and correct. Will be really interesting to see where WT features after a few races. Hopefully she's not a pig. We know she's not WT! And knowing your work she'll hit the water faster than ever. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 Agree about RT, knot WT, I do mean RT I'll always have a suss post race to see how much of a lemon I was or knot. I do like that percent against history stuff. It's also handy for a suss of my competitors...... part of my 'know thy enemy' programme. Agree with you WT on the PHRF comment. As we know MM is watching can I say, can you tag a time of boat ownership change? Just be nice to see if Rockweld is faster than Squid Vicious and if so how long it takes Toles to get up to Rockweld speed. Err... I suppose the name change may do that? Link to post Share on other sites
markm 30 Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Have split SV/Rockweld so they now show separately. Rockwelds RaceTrack rating of 0.84 is probably a bit flattering as the majority of it was one night of sprints. Doing well in sprints does tend to make you look a bit quicker than you really are. The Full History of 788 I'm guessing is pretty close and not a bad target at all for SV to be aiming for. Looking forward to seeing the nearly new and likely well improved W/T out, is there a likely date yet? Link to post Share on other sites
Kiteroa 8 Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 Yeah, 15th June, Westpark Marina. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 Simrad then WT ? Link to post Share on other sites
Kiteroa 8 Posted June 2, 2012 Share Posted June 2, 2012 Yeah, I'd like to do a bit of that. She should be easier to sail 2 up now. She's pretty much good to go. Pushed her across the lawn today and did most of the rigging on the prod. A few pics on the FB page... http://www.facebook.com/WildThing.Y840 Link to post Share on other sites
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