João/psail

SOL 40' Series Championship Q3&Q4 - Hawaiian Zig Zag race

The Molokini Crater in Hawaii

João/psail

Zig NOR At first it seems a complicated course with #7 rounding’s along #6 (of the main #7) Hawaii Islands, till you get dizzy enough to start looking for the Dramamine pills as your closest friend. Fortunately, till this hour never needed it. But no, it’s a fairly simple race, well designed (thank you for it SOLer George/Jaws), practically with all the principal Points of Sail but, with some emphasis for the Downwind. This particular point, namely, helped me to choose the boat for the present race: the Hawaiian Leg of the 40´Series. The race course is divided in #3 “vertical” legs intermediated with ”4”sub-horizontal ones. The overall race rhumb line is oriented (from the SL to the FL center) at 348,23º in geo coordinates.

Hawaiian Zig Zag race NOR

Zag Weather and choosing the boat In a previous SOL race, the Victoria to Maui 2017, I had the opportunity to have a good insight on the Hawaiian Weather approximately during 15 days, in particular for making the preps for the final approach to Maui. Two conclusions in major from then:

• Islands Winds stability; • NE to E Winds on the approach.

Again, the predominant Winds for our Zag race were from the NE-NE/E quadrant and gentle. In short, some crunched figures for the record:

- 40,57º ≤ TWD ≤ 60,91º with a TWD, average = 48,36º; - 4,67 Kts ≤ TWS ≤ 14,79 Kts with a TWS, average = 10,53 Kts.

Note: the above mentioned values were taken from a routing made on 26th September afternoon.

João/psail

With Winds blowing chiefly from NE - NE/E directions (from the right side of the “blue” picture), the Downwind was going to be the main Point of Sail, a place where the SOL Ker stays quite comfortable, especially when the TWS surpass the 10,00 Kts figure. Also two predicted facts. First. The Wind was going to get fresher after rounding the Hawaii Island, the biggest and tallest one (Mauna Kea mountain height is 4.207 m) from all the Hawaiian Islands, on the UTC+1 second night while sailing to the Kaho'olawe Island South tip for rounding the third race Mark. Second. Being the tallest island induces an increase in the width of the Wind stagnation area effects along the Windward side, meaning less WP as you get closer to the North shore. Even using a simple GFS Model Grib like we had, you can easily see that effect with the SOL Client Grib viewer. One option here was to go further North of the Hawaii Island to catch better WP, but losing in the process precious angle for the next Wind rotation (anticlockwise) during the approach to Kaho'olawe Island cumulatively with a penalty for the extra distance made. Some boats went for it and even managed well during the second night. The problem was later. From all the legs in-between Islands, the first crossing was the one I feared most. The routing I’ve used for the race Start (at 02:00 hrs UTC, 27th) was made after the 16:30 hrs UTC 26th WF release but, the race Start was going to be made with the next WF (22:30 hrs) and during the night another WF was schedule (04:30 hrs UTC). Anyhow, in spite of having slept all nights during the night WF’s, the islands Weather stability factor helped a lot.

Photograph by Ron Garnett/Hawaii Tourism Authority

Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC

João/psail

Well, in general, sailing this race with the Ker 40 seemed to me the good choice. The overall race results massively demonstrate it, with #14 Ker 40’ boats occupying the first available leaderboard positions. We easily recognize there is some dock site “looking over the shoulder” during pre-race registration process, not only because we are humans and everyone wants to have the best boat to win (who doesn’t?) or, at least to go further up in the leaderboard as possible. Others prefer to trust in the top SOLers choices/feelings, but let’s not forget there’s the overall Series strategy dictating you to do better results the competition did when you use the same boat they already sailed. In the present race, the first non-Ker, a Class 40, crossed the FL in #15 position (aprox. with a δT of 1,50 hrs), so everyone who already used the Class 40 in previous races and finished ahead of #15, gained points on this particular boat (to SimeMali skipper despair) for the Series overall account. Well, not quite like that as there is the race discarding rule to which I shall post on the SOL forum some comments and suggestions to SRC about it, (http://www.sailonline.org/board/thread/15393/_/?page=1#post-15393). For the majority of the Series races the individual boat’s choice is not so immediate. In those situations the multi boat routing can give us some help on our final choice. I can hear the crowd yelling “it’s a time consuming job”, or ”1 is already bad, but 3 routings…”. Ok lads, I agree. Hence my simple suggestions for the SOLers “routers”: exchange information. Yes, you can allocate tasks/routings with your fellows and jointly evaluate and discuss the boat options, namely. For the “non-routeurs”, first, start learning it. Here in SOL you’ll have all support you need to have a safe crossing in the initial routing torments. For this one I just did two pre-race routings (the first one I published it on the SOL forum on 25th (http://www.sailonline.org/board/thread/15384/40-series-champ-q3q4-hawaiian-zz-ro/?page=1#post-15384 ), and for that purpose I’ve used only one boat, the Ker 40. This time I didn’t have the opportunity to talk with my SOLer friends (one of them didn’t race, the other used the same boat), so my choice came from a solitary judgment.

Routed vs. sailed Always interesting to understand what happened between the previously routed paths and the effectively sailed ones, as shown on the next two pictures:

• The “vertical” legs had practically no differences between predicted and latter sailed;

• The major differences came from the first two “sub-horizontal” legs while the remaining ones went along as routed. The main reasons were the following:

• “Vertical” legs had the shortest length, so with less time to be influenced by differences from eventual changes in the successive WF’s. Also, being more “geometrical”, i.e., without too much options to be sailed with different HDG’s.

• In the first two “sub-horizontal” legs the initial predicted TWD’s changed some degrees, not allowing for more direct sailed paths between the race marks. I f I recall it correctly, they also had more TWS than initially predicted, allowing to sail extra-distance to the gybe marks inside the outer limits of the good WP zones, especially during the periods without any significant wind shifts.

In fact, the path for the last “vertical” leg - after Kaua’i Island - improved during the race, with a more direct course to a gybing point SE of the Ni’hau Island and after an almost direct course to the FL.

João/psail

First pre-race routing, the one published before the race.

psail made course

João/psail

The race It was interesting to see till the second night (again, in UTC time), more or less right after clearing the vertical of Hawaii Hawi race Mark, the Class and Soto boats climbing on the leaderboard. I recall being easily passed by a Soto (Jason) during the gybes near the Hawaiian Island North shore with better speed and under a higher TWA. At ideal light Wind conditions they go away. And the Ker fleet just couldn’t do any better, except wait for the WP to increase, which it did. Even before arriving the Kaho'olawe Island South tip and race Mark, started another race: the Ker fleet went up on speed. Then, longreacher, limesinferior, Kipper, rafa and psail began the dispute for the top five positions and slowly increased the distance to the remaining fleet, mainly composed by, you guess it, Ker boats. A maneuver error from limesinferior just before the Moloka’I rounding allowed psail to climb onto second place, position that it was maintained till the FL. Meanwhile longreacher just had to keep covering the path of the following four to cut the FL and get honors. This time rafa was kept at a reasonable distance fom psail in order to avoid any slighshot maneuver near the FL, as I already had in a particular Ice. She went for the last podium place in the race. Again, congratulations longreacher and rafa. Thank you SOL and SRC for bringing another excellent, if not, a great classic race for the Series. See you next week in Irish bonk’s waters, or better, sailing around Cork, preferably in a ropadh gaoithe. Aloha SOLers João/psail