Don't forget that while you are busy to prevent somebody to pass on windward by luffing, some others can pass you on leeward as you deviate from the normal course. That makes another tactic choice.

Our Fleet chooses courses based on the wind direction to try to get as much W-L in as possible, not always perfect because we use existing nav and other club's marks. I'm usually disappointed if we can't get a mostly W-L course. It's just more interesting to me as far as competing goes - there's far more that needs to be considered - what side of the course, who to cover, etc. in addition to keeping the boat speed up and playing the conditions/waves/wind, and getting the tacks and jibes (nothing better than good fast jibe...) right or at least better than the other guys. And yes, there's tactics on all points of sail, but I think there's more on W-L course. We do reaching legs sometimes to get to where we'll do W-L laps, sometimes we feel the need to air it out and just drag race (reach) for a course, and sometimes conditions change on the course and things end up as reaches. And reaches are fun, don't get me wrong, but for me it makes for less interesting racing, and doesn't do much for overall skill building. It is probably more interesting for spectators. We just got done with 26 Tuesdays worth of racing in which we attempted to make the courses mostly W-L (not perfect, and our start line is usally heavily biased...), I still prefer it, and our record attendance for our Fleet shows that emphasis is not turning people away.



Although I do like the potential for a good finish for myself when the course has more reaching - I think the performance differences between boat designs goes away to a large degree and boats like mine can make great use of their rating when a decent amount of jib-reaching occurs. I feel a little bad for some of the boats in this case, as I think the W-L advantages in some of the newer designs (reflected in their ratings) go away somewhat in those conditions.



It's interesting that some say W-L is a monohull thing. All boats perform better on a beam reach - the beam reach was taken out of the mono courses for same reason - it didn't add much to the racing even if it was fun. I like to tell monohullers that we try to do W-L as much as possible, because they don't believe that we can sail upwind - the reaction is almost always the same.



My $0.02, for whatever it's worth...

Another point about the PN being based on ABC courses is the (relative) advantage spi boats have over sloop (and especially unirig) boats in a leeward (particularly straight leeward) leg. Since we all (at least seem to) agree that reaching speeds are relatively close regardless of boat, by eliminating this leg and the time that would be spent on it and incorporating only W-L courses, boats with spis will gain an advantage over those without if raced against each other on PN's. As for opportunites for boat contact, IMO there are far more in a straight W-L course since you have boats coming upwind from both sides AND downwind from both sides crossing in the middle. At least on an ABC course the downwind boats tend to be to one side of the course. As to tactics- a spi equipped boat is much better off by carrying high above the B mark, even "leading" some poor non-spi boat up high to "block" it since when they finally turn down the spi boat will do much better getting the distance back- So simply stay high around A if coming in behind a bunch of "slower", non-spi boats and pass them fairly high to windward setting your spi "early" even and blast down to C.



Kirt

Jim

If sailing just isn't much fun anymore I sugest you add a spinnaker to your boat. You won't need a YA Hoo leg to add excitment. EVERY downwind leg is that way for me. Plain and simple. I go upwind just to be able to go downwind. I have hit speeds in the high 20s in a race this year. What more can I ask for? I have been racing spinnaker catamarans arond the bouys since 94. That was before it was cool. My first boat was a spinnaker boat (Hobie 21). I will never race any cat without one. I have introduced many people to spinnakers including Tom Korz who posted above.

Just add a spinnaker and you will be opened up to a whole new world. Every down wind leg will be just like a reach.



Jacques:

I didn't say anything about luffing. You just block their lane. I don"t think a boat to leeward will be able to sail through the wind shadow of two boats one behind the other.

Barry, my original post went on & on about how much fun sailing & racing is for me, *except* for when I race W-L only courses. I don't need to have a spinnaker to have fun on my boat, I have plenty of fun on my boat in whatever configuration it is - unirig solo, unirig with a couple of kids, sloop solo, sloop with crew, or spi (soon). When I get a spinnaker, I may mind the W-L only courses less, but that doesn't mean it's right for the majority of the non-spi racers that we have in catamarans.

Jim and Don,

Why didn't you request a reaching leg at Centerboard? The mark was set. The PRO said you didn't want one unless the wind was over 12?



Spinakerjohn (w/o spin)

Wrong info you got there. When I was asked which if the 3 courses in the SIs we would prefer, I said we didn't prefer triangle or "gold cup" (Olympic) Olympic course *if* it was going to be a 45-90-45 shape like they usually set up for the dinghies. I said if they did want to send us on a triangle course, to set the reaching mark high, like 90 degrees. Never said anything about wind speed. Turns out they never used those courses all weekend, anyway, so they could have placed itthe reaching mark correctly for cats without bothering the dinghies.
When I did RC in the past for this type of mixed regatta, we wrote SIs to have completley different reaching marks for the dinghies vs cats, (e.g. yellow tetrahedrons vs orange balls).

Barry,

Hit the nail on the head.

"If sailing just isn't much fun anymore I sugest you add a spinnaker to your boat. You won't need a YA Hoo leg to add excitment. EVERY downwind leg is that way for me."

I use to own a Nacra 5.8 and loved the blast reaches. Now I own a Tornado with a kite and love the down winds even more.

All you Reachers out there, give a kite a go. Nothing like going balls out on a big downwind running one on the wire with the kite up. We start to pull a wire when the wind gets to about 15 knots.

Personaly, my favorite course would have to be a windward/leward with a clearing mark set at 90 degrees and about 10 boat lengths away from the A mark. This alows you to round the top mark hull in the air and keep it there until you reach the clearing mark. During this short reach the crew can go in and make all the necessary adjustments before hoisting the kite as we exit the reach. It is also safer to get clear of the upwind sailors and gives you a bit more room to gybe staight away if you wish and cut through those still coming upwind.

I also like a gate at the bottom mark to give you more options as to which way to round and what side of the course you would like to go to. If you only have a rounding mark at the bottom, sailors (unless one side of the course is heavly favoured) will tend to go to the starbourd side of the course on a port course so to minimise lost time in tacks.

Whilst I still love a good old long blast reach, I find this course the most challenging, exciting and enjoyable.

Stephen Medwell
Team Tornado 'ALIVE'
AUS-260
www.tornadoalive.com

Yea, I got it wrong. But that's what we get when a J24 sailor is setting the courses.

John Howard
F25c #24

a little off topic, but I have a question.... when I'm racing against my monohull brethren, they always get pissed off when I fly a hull over the mark :P

Is that legal?

Once again, I get the advice - forget reaching during races, just buy a spinnaker.

I have a perfectly good catamaran, that is fast upwind, a blast on a reach, and tactically challenging downwind. I don't need a spinnaker to be happy when I race, I just need some reaches once in a while. What the spinnaker boats experience downwind, we experience on a reach. Don't take away the reaches, then turn around & say the solution is to buy new hardware & a sail, or a new boat. The solution is to put reaches back into race courses. This is certainly fair, for handicap racing, since that is how the handicaps are derived.

Next time they get mad at you for flying a hull over the leeward mark, tell them you are ticked they are heeling thier mast over the weather mark...

Sorry champ (jcasto1),

Did not mean to offend non spinnaker boats. Did not mean give away your non spinnaker boat, but just have a go of a cat with a kite. You'll love it.

Any way, even on our Nacra 5.8, I realy enjoyed the windward/leward races as they were far more tacticly challenging (It is more a racers race). We still had the short reach to the clearance mark but left the long reaches for before/in between and after the races.

Quite simply, most spinnaker boats do not want reaches. May be an option would be to run a triangle course with non spinnaker boats doing one triangle, windward/leward and then another triangle (3 laps) and the spinnaker boats do 4 windward lewards.

You will have to run 2 different divisions or use a course corection handicap.

Just a thought.

Stephen Medwell
Team Tornado 'ALIVE'
AUS-260

Although the Portsmouth site says the numbers are derived from ABC courses, keep in mind that they use real results to base the corrections and ratings. And the majority of the races they'd use results from are W-L I'll bet. So I'm willing to bet that the numbers are truly more consistent with pure W-L racing than ABC courses.

Of course, I might get lumped in with the spin boats now that I have added a spin to my boat. My opinion about W-L was formed well before adding the spinnaker. And to verify what others have said - adding a spinnaker has been a great learning experience and added a new dimension to an old boat, and has been well worth the cost (although I did take the cheap side on things). As for racing results with it, it's a mixed bag, but that may be due to learning curve and older stuff. Our commodore used to race a 5.5 with a chute and then a screacher/hooter - the boat's up to it for sure. The great thing about it is not that you don't ever reach anymore, it's that in addition to the great experience reaching now the downwind legs are even more fun then they used to be! It just adds a new dimension to the whole package - it doesn't eliminate any!

Ever try to put a spinnaker on a Nacra 18 Square? SNAP!! There goes the mast. I know how much fun it is to run a chute. We run a 540 sq. ft. Smyth chute on my Supercat-20 but it is not pratical on short bouy courses so we sail the Supercat on distance races and the 18 Square on bouy races. My vote is for an offset B mark for bouy racing for two reasons:1- unirigs don't do well downwind and 2: It's more fun which is the reason I sail...
Don C.

Remember them? Before Roseanne, we had "Mommy, Mommy." Usually slightly less shocking than "Dead Baby" jokes, they were nonetheless pretty awfull.

Every joke was two sentences, the first one always began "Mommy, Mommy, ..." and the second was Mommy's reply, usually beginning with "Shut up or ...."

So there was:

"Mommy, Mommy, what's that green stuff around daddy's eyes?"
"Shut up and eat around it"

"Mommy, Mommy, I don't wanna see Grandma"
"Shut up and keep digging."

Well the title of this post reminds me of one...

"Mommy, Mommy, I don't like running in circles."
"Shut up or I'll nail your other foot to the floor"

So now we have:

"Mommy, Mommy, I don't like sailing in circles...."
"Shut up or I'll nail your other hull to the mark"

Okay, not exactly funny, but the head movie of somebody spinning madly around the mark.... oh never mind.