Thanks Gil.

Pete,

You are not going to get any real numbers worth you could sort.

1 guy is pinching a bit, going slow and sideways. Boat 2 generated a bit of hull speed and rode his foil lift up to the same angle of attack but is maintaining speed and going twice as fast.
Maintaining hull speed on a downwind point of sail is even a larger performance gap generator.
Technique generates speeds and watching tracks from the very top F18 guys at NA and worlds, huge spurts of speed came with pressure and once you drop out angle of attack and VMG are all over the place even with the very best of the drivers.

I am sure the AC programs are working on this with huge budgets on instrumentation and computer modeling. At least to date this is obviously not working there. Boat handling and reading the conditions is way the more important factor. Coutts has been made to look like an amateur at times. I would bet he is relying on his past experience and trying to be scientific rather than reacting. If you have to tell somebody to do something or wait for a number to tell you to go, it is too late on cats. Anticipation is key to ultimate speed.

If all you want is something to compare against to know that you are doing:

under average,
average,
above average,

without further quantification, then I think getting som GPS plots is good enough.

I'm lost...

That is a good place to be! Then you are close to not being lost anymore
Just consider how many are lost without realising so.

Pete, let me know if you want any others to check.
Or just let us know what trim you want to know more about :-)

Hey, please post as many "personal polars" as possible! They are great for comparison!

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/91690890

Here's a gps track, how do you get started?

Download http://gpsactionreplay.free.fr/index.php?menu=2

Then import your GPS datafile into GPSAR. Create polar is a menu choice

I was unable to get the raw data out of the Garmin page.

Pete, I think that the PC version (as opposed to the web version) of Kattack will allow you to do polars on any boat in any race. For example, you could go to the CRAW races and do a polar on me, Karl, Mark, or Daniel.

I'll play around with it...

Hi guys,

Ive been messing around with the Prostart and GPSAR and it spits out polars quiet easily.

Ive attached a polar of my old viper in 20 kts. I supose the you need to get different ones for wind and wave conditions.

After a second look the wind direction my be a little out of whack but you get the idea. GPSAR has great statistics on top and average speeds and also shows you the runs on the map.

Heres the proper one with the wind orientated the right way. I think the interesting thing is that the upwind vmg seems quite wide. So you can still get good upwind VMG even when you put the bow down pretty hard.

I've tried working with GPSAR and had little luck.

Pro Start is your friend Pete. It talks to GPSAR perfectly. I love it. Although there is almost zero time to look at it while sailing unless its light. But it records 40 hours of sailing on it. Its fun to go back through it and see where you went wrong. The detail is quite amazing.

I got my metal working mate to make me up a very light aluminium bracket that i sew to the tramp between the mast and the starboard hull just behind the front beam. It seems to work really well there. The jib self tacker seams to protect it from the spin sheets.