Become a navigator...ISAF Youths misfire...America's Cup conumdrum

by . on 17 Jul 2014 Welcome to Sail-World.com’s New Zealand e-magazine for July 17, 2014

The form guide is being turned on its back at the ISAF Youth Worlds being sailed in Tavira, Portugal.

With a couple of exceptions, New Zealand's performances to date have been disappointing. One crew is in the top three; another is sixth, and the rest are in double digit places.

But it is a similar story with many of the other so-called developed sailing countries, who for once have not dominated this regatta.

In fact, there are a lot of the lesser known countries dotted around the top end of the leaderboard, something that will bring a wry smile to those who believe that sailing is elitist and dominated by a few countries.

The NZL Sailing Trust Youth Team are finding out some of the hard lessons of international competition. The ISAF Youth Worlds, like the Olympics, is one that you can't win on the first day, but you certainly can lose it.

Many of the young Kiwi sailors will have learned that lesson this week.

Currently, there are two days to run. We have been featuring the Yachting NZ reports each day, along with some excellent images that always seem to come from this regatta, and video.

We're also featuring Rob Burn's inimitable blog from the French 420 Nationals. Despite some character forming results on the water, Rob always seems to remember that it is just a sport, and mistake are learning opportunities. Hopefully, his proteges share his philosophy.

Over the years, we have used PredictWind extensively in Sail-World. Developed by Olympic and America's Cup sailor, Jon Bilger, the wind and weather forecasting system is constantly enhanced and developed, and now has a reasonable free version, along with the subscription versions including enhanced functionality.

One of the features that has been particularly useful is the weather routing function, which we have run in the last two Volvo Ocean Races, and numerous other offshore events, such as the Sydney Hobart, Coastal Classic, Fiji and Noumea races and many more.

Obviously it is intended for the serious offshore sailor - be it racing or cruiser. However, it is a great exercise whenever there is a yacht race on to slip into navigation mode and see who is in a winning position - whether it is going to be a big or small boat race and just playing around with some of the options.

in this edition, we have a step by step procedure to show how the weather routing function of PredictWind works, and you can have a shot at doing your own route, pretty well anywhere in the world. Lining these models up with real life is another interesting experience, and you certainly can teach yourself a lot about weather routing, the direction and effect of weather systems, and develop a very good feel for the wind and weather generally.

Of course, there is no substitute for looking at the sky and the natural signs. Again when you can see a weather system about to change in your vicinity n PredictWind, take a look outside and see how all those lines and numbers on the screen translate into the sky above.

There is a mobile version of PredictWind available. it has had a lot of work done on it over the last couple of years, and with the new high resolution smart phones and other mobile devices, it is just stunning in its ease of use and portability. One of the cool features of PredictWind is that you can set many of the functions up on your computer at home or office, and those settings will carry over onto your mobile devices - so it is not a cold start every time you access the application. It just starts up where you left off.

Many America's Cup fans are just shaking their heads in disbelief as to the developments in the current cycle.

The Independent's well connected yachting correspondent, Stuart Alexander, has covered some of the points from the Competitors Meeting held last weekend in Los Angeles. Suffice to say the event managers are not making it easy for the commercially based teams, who will have to commit to $3million of fees and performance bonds in the next three weeks.

That is without knowing what the venue will be, with two options on the table - neither is a patch on San Francisco for sponsor-pull. There is no TV plan - and while that is often the case at this stage of the game, teams have not previously had to make such a big financial call, in such a tight entry time frame of just two months.

At the last America's Cup, there were even more financial demands on the teams in terms of Euro 1million Entry Fee and USD 3million Performance Bond, but a much wider entry window. Then when the entries didn't materialise the fees got slashed to just $100,000 - but it was too late to pull more Challengers.

The same mistake seems to have been made again, with maybe just five Challengers being in the mix - maybe less.

Stay tuned to our website www.sail-world.com for the latest news and developments.

Good sailing!

Richard Gladwell
NZ Editor

sailworldnzl@gmail.com

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