Finished in Tokyo

HURRAY   HURRAY   HURRAY

Suratna has Finished the Japan Sprint Sailing Race.

Yesterday was a day of weakening winds and changing wind directions. So a lot of attention was required to sail the optimal conditions. 

I did gain some places from yesterdays 67th spot to the 62nd place on the Finish. That was not straightforward however. While I tried to find the optimal sails for after the last gate, I made somewhere a mistake and changed the sail on the boat in stead of programming to change the sail at the first WP mark :( Consequence was, that I was sailing for 10 min in irons and lost some 6 places. 

My total sailing time was: 4 days, 16 hours, 3 min, 5 sec. 

This was an interesting race with some tricky points of some islands on the route but  most of all the variations in wind. I think we have seen winds speeds from 3 - 28 kts and wind-directions from stern, from the sides as well as from the bow.

I like to thank the readers of my blog, the LiveSkipper game and most of all the skippers who participated and gave me a fierce battle. 

Note: for details of the ranking and the trending of daily rankings for the Flagships and the boats in the English Forum you can find by clicking on the tabs above.

Making the Best of the Storm

Yesterday we got a strong NE storm to battle with. It was almost straight head-on to the next Gate#3 Ko-Jima.


So a play of tacking at the best times to try to surprise but most of all to pass the other boats. 
Well, I did reasonably well , my ranking has improved fantastic from yesterday 209 to this morning 67 ! These ranking places depend also on which side of a tack you are and yesterday I was looking for a favorable location for the better winds; so you loose a little to win a lot. 


For a view on my route see the green line in the Map "Japan_Sprint Route", on right most TAB above . 


Not so long before I will pass the Ko-Jima gate and then it is almost straight to the Finish in Tokyo, be it that there are some islands on route. Also Tokyo is situated in a bay, so some tricky sailing is coming. AND ........this all will of course happen during my following night time, so I have to work out a sharp WP scheduler setting. 

Un-expected Windshift

Yesterday I made a pretty good approach for the Gate#2 Yaku_Shima and passed it in the 62nd place.

I had some look at the best approach to the Gate#3 Ko-jima. A strong NE storm is coming in today and I figured out if I stayed a little more South, I could enjoy the SW winds on Spinnaker to make a good fast move East and later make a turn North. This would also recude the miles I had to sail in headwinds.

This morning I saw however that I was thrown back in the fleet and the wind situation changed in the mid-night wind-update. 
So I made a new route exploration and found out that if I would turn more ENE I could sail 2 hrs short to the next gate; as many other boats were already on this course, I guess they had seen the wind change already.

Ok in the chase , rank 209 now.  


YES..........HURRAY  
I changed the lay-out of the pages! Now if you visit a page by clicking on one of the TAB's on top of the post , you will see a bigger  Map, Chart and Table. 

Sailing to catch the Leaders

As I indicated yesterday my Easterly course brought me in an area with weaker winds. My turn more to the west did throw me back and the boast that before were sailing in the west came Eastwards and could pass me. 


Last night had a reasonable progress as I was in wind comparable to the leaders. This morning early the WP scheduler put the boat on the heading towards the next gate. 
I discovered that a change in sail however increased the speed with 0.3 kts. 


My Rank this morning is 259 in a fleet of 873 boats. 


For the complete ranking list, a trending chart and the Map for the route, please use the button above the posts and below the heading. I am studying and working on a better i.e. larger screen area for the tables. 

The Start was in Time

The Start was with many boats and all in time . I choose to sail out into the Sea as I had seen stronger winds up there, while the wind direction was more or less same everywhere: head wind upto the Gate#1 at Uku-Shima.
Some boats took the route closer to the coast and gained initialy good places.

A sudden unexpected wind shift occurred at 1200 gmt, but it worked out good for me and by 1500 gmt, I had a placing amongst the first 40 boats.
The night I sailed on the WP scheduler and passed the gate#1 properly.

In the morning however, I see that I took a course to much easterly, which is shorter distance to the next gate#2, but due to a big wind system the winds were weak and I lost considerable places.
Now I try to pick up some speed by keeping more to the South Wets, but it might be too late to stay in touch with the leaders.

For a complete Ranking you may have a look at the LiveSkipper ranking pages  or have a look at the special trending sheets for the boats in the English Fleet on the link Ranking - Japan Sprint (also in the list on right side)

A FLAGSHIP competition is also on-going during the Japan Sprint Race. 

see Flagship competition A Flagship is a sailing boat where several members of a club in LiveSkipper are changing the helm and try to give a round-the-clock attendance on the helm in the hope to gain. 

Target for the next day is Gate#2 Yaku-Shima, which will be the most Southerly point on this route and afterwards it will go Norht East.

The Start of Japan Sprint

The Start for the LiveSkipper Sailing Race JAPAN SPRINT is nearing.


WARNING 


At 800 UTC this race will start. 


There is still time to register, for free ,  here : LiveSkipper Japan Sprint


In LiveSkipper you will have time actually to set the boat heading and sails from the time you register for the race untill 08:09 UTC. All instruction given till then, will be activated and the boat start at 08:00 UTC will be realised.


Around 08:12 a first Ranking list will be published and you may search for your boat and its placing in the fleet. You also can see your opponents boats and the total number of participating boats. 


The wind is from South Westerly direction, and that is about the heading from Starting point to the 1e gate at Fukuoka.
One advice in order not to get grounded on one of the small islands: Zoom in till the coast line get highlighted, then also all islands will be shown. Stay away some pixel from this line to make sure you keep the water under the keel. 


Fair Winds.

How to Sail this LiveSkipper Race

Once you have seen this race and You would like to try sailing in a modern fast IMOCA60 sailing-yacht against some to the world most experienced sailors then you can register for the race for free at this site. 
LiveSkipper - Japan Sprint Sailing Race


Just sign-in with your boats name if you have sailed before. 
If you are not registered in Liveskipper (LS) before then it will ask you to register after clicking above link or you may visit the LiveSkipper site, link on right side in Interested links. 


For new LS skippers, there is still time to sail some practice rounds, just search in GAME menu and sub-menu Race&Challenges and push the button to join.


Note: best is to choose a challenge as it allows you to start anytime, even allows you to abort and start again, for a better weather-front or so. The Japan Sprint will not allow you to sail untill the Starting time has come, but some other earlier races will still allow you to start. 

Race Announcement

LiveSkipper has announced a Virtual Sailing Race in Japan. 


The Sailing Race is called: Japan Sprint
Starting date and time will be 21st May 2011 at 08:00 UTC. 


This is an exciting shorted distance race with the Virtual Sailing Simulator LiveSkipper. It is completely web-based and can be played with every modern browser on any platform.