Facebook

Login

Support Sailonline

If you haven't already - join the SAILONLINE YACHT CLUB!

Please also consider making a donation - all amounts are greatly appreciated!

Board » Sailonline Yacht Club » brainaid

Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next

Posted by
Aklinyolu1


Users avatar

Posts
12
Registered at
2008-12-25 20:50:54
2009-11-28 12:14:53 - Re: brainaid
hi all
first of all, congrats and thanks to brainaid for his results and for building such a tool.
distributing the same tool and giving the same chance to all the sailors mean that we can give the same chance to a 5 year old child who has no idea about sailing but only keyboard and maybe numbers... i dont see why i shall play against machines that has no idea about sailing?
since i hv started with sol, i am using my own natural brain, looking at weather forecats and calculating angles etc etc... i hv good or bad results, i dont mind as long as i have pleasure, but all i am playing is a real game with no external support. i hv concluded that it is impossible to compete with the sailors using external weather forecasts and sailplanners. so we do have a small community and we r competing within ourselves disregarding other players on the list.
whatever brainaid is doing is great. i guess that can be a nice tool for professionals in real life and that he can market it. i may be one of the first buyers to use it in our regattas. but from sol side, which is only a game, we may not use such instruments, or we shall have different rankings.
i did hv in the past mentioned 2 subjects, via email or forum, i pay again attention to them: the weather forecats may face serious changes upon updates, then it is not fair for the ones not using external forecats. and the other subject is about the weight of the races; short or long, i guess that they shall not be same weighted and i hv suggested a formula for that, in the forum.
sol is just a game, but i have learnt a lot in terms of navigation! so why dont we keep it with an amateur spirit? i am participating less to the races, there may be few things to improve to keep the motivation high?...
have nice winds!
aklinyolu1

--- Last Edited by TUR Aklinyolu1 at 2009-11-28 12:21:39 ---
Posted by
TUR_AC505


Users avatar

Posts
72
Registered at
2009-07-07 15:23:10
2009-11-28 15:17:26 - Re: brainaid
I was not agreement with my fellow countryman re using programs...however, when I read his last post his comment about people with no idea about sailing participate and turn this into a PC game ! I fully support what he says.

In the real world using navigation programming is unavoidable and acceptable, but unlike the sol environment, there you have to know the seas and sailing its not only about navigation programming. Making the nav program available to everybody will bu unfortunate and kill the sol.
Posted by
NZL_PaulR


Users avatar

Posts
311
Registered at
2008-07-22 12:21:30
2009-11-28 18:26:23 - Re: brainaid
Maybe or maybe not.

Using "Planning programs" is one of the major benefits in SoL because you can quickly learn how they work, their advantages and most importantly their disadvantages.

The "LEARNING" to use benefit IMHO is wonderful, and a real benefit and skill development for when you do a real ocean race. The alternative of struggling to learn a new system at sea is very VERY hard.

So practice using any planning program is good, but when you can compete against others, your bad decisions show up sooner.

The great advantage of using planners in SoL is that you don't get cold, wet, hungry and possibly sea sick.

Once having learned and used a planning program, IMHO, one is better equiped to SoL race WITHOUT needing to use one to see if you can beat the others.

Just that little more incentive and challange to improve your decision making process.

Using any "tool" is hard the first time. By the 31st time it is easier
By the 101st time, very easy . . . . but now you need to move onto chapter 2??? LOL
If it breaks, it's not strong enough!
Posted by
TUR_AC505


Users avatar

Posts
72
Registered at
2009-07-07 15:23:10
2009-11-29 00:38:07 - Re: brainaid
but you are suggesting to use sol as a training ground for nav programs!

I want to have fun and develop my navigational feel and senses (which i believe is more important than learning to use a program). SOL should not be a training tool.

I am an old school engineer and although I use state-of-the-art software to design which is available today, I still use and value my judgment based on my insight and feel developed from the times when we had to work with paper, pencil and slide rulers...that's why I believe its something more valuable than just accepting the output of a software which is a closed box and one doesn't have a clue what's in the box if you don't have the feel.
Posted by
NZL_PaulR


Users avatar

Posts
311
Registered at
2008-07-22 12:21:30
2009-11-29 01:20:32 - Re: brainaid
Planning software is only a tool and the weather forcasts are only learned guesses based upon modelling, to crunch the numbers.

There needs to be "feelings" and estimates of the chances, probability that the actual weather will be exactly as forcasted. IRL this does not happen, Calm spots get bigger and capture one; you may not sail as fast as your polars, even if they were 100% accurate.

IMHO and my own experience, I can only say I learned a lot about sail planning using "Sail Planner". So for me SoL was a wonderful experience "Learning" to use a sail planning program. It certainly gave me many more examples and situations to practice and experiment with, rather than waiting for one long ocean race once every two or three years, if my domestic manager, SWMBO wife, agrees to let me go to sailing for that long. Basically most places from NZ take a week to get there and are in simple terms all have the nearest land about 1,000+ miles away.

I have enough problems racing every evening in the week already. I'm never home!!
If it breaks, it's not strong enough!
Posted by
Rhino


Users avatar

Posts
7
Registered at
2008-12-09 21:44:05
2009-12-01 00:31:46 - Re: brainaid
brainaid: "Now, after finishing the real brain work above, I use a script to program my planed track into SOL using DCs (delayed commands)"

Hmmmm ... as I suspected, your perfect tracks gave it away! Manually entering, and editing, the DC's is a time-consuming pain and I agree - you had an unfair advantage. But if you can provide a tool we can all use to improve this process, then please allow me to say 'Thank you very much!'

And please come back and race with us - your expertise is sadly missed!

Cheers,
Rhino
Posted by
SWE54


Users avatar

Posts
29
Registered at
2007-08-11 10:02:20
2009-12-02 00:07:04 - Re: brainaid
Reading all this and getting a bit disappointed. Some of the fun and joy has been taken out of this for me now. I don't mind any stand alone tools at all but when there are features used not available to all I consider that unfair to express it mildly. Yes, I use a router now and then, mostly on longer races but not always. On short races the router is not of that much help and I sail most of the time "unplugged".
I would very much like to see brainaid back into the game, but on the same page as the rest of us. It's only a game,let's keep it like that.
/Michael (SWE54)

--- Last Edited by Michael at 2009-12-02 00:08:34 ---

--- Last Edited by Michael at 2009-12-02 00:09:58 ---
Posted by
Schakel


Users avatar

Posts
183
Registered at
2008-12-19 09:19:00
2009-12-02 12:04:32 - Re: brainaid
SWE54 said @ 2009-12-02 00:07:04:
Reading all this and getting a bit disappointed. Some of the fun and joy has been taken out of this for me now. I don't mind any stand alone tools at all but when there are features used not available to all I consider that unfair to express it mildly. Yes, I use a router now and then

You've just proved how subjective the concept of fairness is, because you see, for various reasons routing software is NOT available to all. So, if at times you'll be using routing software to aid you in your decisions in order to try and gain an advantage over other competitors, you'll do so because it is available to you. Eddie just took what was available to him to gain an advantage over you and others with similar software.

If it is taking some of the fun out of it for you, image what the others who don't have any such options might be feeling.

Philip (Schakel)
Posted by
SWE54


Users avatar

Posts
29
Registered at
2007-08-11 10:02:20
2009-12-02 15:26:37 - Re: brainaid
Schakel said @ 2009-12-02 12:04:32:
You've just proved how subjective the concept of fairness is, because you see, for various reasons routing software is NOT available to all. So, if at times you'll be using routing software to aid you in your decisions in order to try and gain an advantage over other competitors, you'll do so because it is available to you. Eddie just took what was available to him to gain an advantage over you and others with similar software.

If it is taking some of the fun out of it for you, image what the others who don't have any such options might be feeling.

Philip (Schakel)
As I understood it he had a software that communicated directly with SOL. That is over the line for me. Maybe I understood it wrong but having features "in SOL" not available to others is not ok.
/Michael (SWE54)

--- Last Edited by Michael at 2009-12-02 15:28:29 ---
Posted by
Schakel


Users avatar

Posts
183
Registered at
2008-12-19 09:19:00
2009-12-02 16:39:00 - Re: brainaid
SWE54 said @ 2009-12-02 15:26:37:
As I understood it he had a software that communicated directly with SOL. That is over the line for me. Maybe I understood it wrong but having features "in SOL" not available to others is not ok.
/Michael (SWE54)

---
Please don't take the the wrong way but it is over the line for you because it is not available to you and it puts you at a disadvantage. If your router was, say, Sailplanner and it had a similar function built in, you wouldn't for a minute have thought it unfair towards users of Deckman or Expedition.

The routing tool you are using most likely is not plugged in to SOL, but you are not manually entering the weather data, are you? Elsewhere on this forum, people have asked about ways to automatically enter SOL's data into Expedition. Why? Well, to gain an advantage by automation, of course. Basically the exact opposite of what Eddie was doing. Yet not a single post of how unfair that would be. And I am not so sure there aren't already people doing precisely that.

The only thing that Eddie has done, was outsmarting all of us. But sooner or later, somebody was bound to.

Philip (Schakel)


Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next

Please login to post a reply.

Races

Next Race: 00d 00h 00m

Current Races:

Beketov by Balloon 2026 - In Siberia


Way-back-when France and England, and Spain as well, were squabbling about who should control what of North America, only to lose the most of it to their own insurging colonists, their eastern European neighbour empire, Russia, was quietly assimilating vast, thinly nomadically populated territory of its own – Siberia! Amongst the many explorers and adventurers that served Russia so well in these conquests was the Cossack hetman Pyotr Beketov. Let’s pretend we’re he and eschewing horseback, let’s travel by balloon from Yekaterinberg to Krasnoyarsk – just a short 2000km (1100nm) section of the Trans-Siberian Express’ 9289km!
Race #1972
INFOby brainaid.de
SOL Balloon PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: BOL - SYC
Race starts: Feb 03rd 13:00 Registration will open soon
▶ Flash
GO TO RACE

West Papua to Oregon 2026

Our next race in our Ocean Championships is the first of a series of great natural migrations we will track in 2026. The leatherback turtle is the most widely distributed marine reptile on planet Earth, and chooses to breed in warm tropical waters, but prefers to forage in more temperate habitats, travelling thousands and thousands of miles effortlessly annually to maintain this way of life. Our race will follow one of the typical trips of this turtle, from breeding grounds in the seas off West Papua to the coast of Oregon. It’s only 5900nm, so to keep up, but in comfort, we’ll follow in our Gunboat 90.
Race #2006
INFO by brainaid.de
GB 90 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: OCQ1 - OCCH - MIG - SYC
Race starts: Feb 02nd 11:00 Registration Open!
▶ Flash
GO TO RACE

Race to Up Helly Aa 2026

A-OI!!! The fiery spirit of Shetland’s legendary Up Helly Aa returns, and Sailonline’s annual race to Lerwick is once again upon us. Covering 383 nautical miles from Aberdeen, SOLers will tackle winter waters steeped in Viking tradition. This year, we race the classic Frers 33, a proven cruiser-racer born from the golden era of offshore racing and still a sturdy performer both on the virtual and real water. Can you master the course and reach Lerwick in time for the flames?

SAILING NOTE: Gruney may be approached from any direction but must be passed for rounding purposes as indicated on the chart.
Race #2005
INFO by brainaid.de
Frers 33 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking:
SYC
Race starts: Jan 30th 17:00 Registration Open!
▶ Flash
GO TO RACE

Red Eye - Hobart Convict Run 2026

Back in 2010, one of our SOLers of the first hour, AUS_Scott76, came up with this ‘Convict Run’ out from Hobart, past Cape Raoul and the penal colony of Port Arthur, round Tasman Island, up and back down the east coast of Tasmania, to finish with a tight technical run – so Scott called it – up the picturesque D'entrecasteaux Channel, home to Hobart once again. It’s 250nm, ideal for a bit of ‘Red Eye’ in comfortable Finngulf 43’s, and if the original idea was to pick up some convicts on the way for a bit of R&R and sea air, you may always drop’m back before returning to Hobart!
Race #2002
INFOby brainaid.de
FG 43 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: RED - SYC
RACE CLOSE: Monday,
February 2 at 2300 UTC.
Race starts: Jan 27th 12:00 Registration Open!
▶ Flash
GO TO RACE

New Ice Age 2026 - Longyearbyen to Browerville


Although we have by no means exhausted the possibilities of ice boating on lakes at high latitudes or high altitudes, it was noticeable that as our 2025 Series progressed, there were calls from time to time for longer-distance challenges, and so in response to these calls we will pretend that global warming has reversed and as a result the coastal waters of Antarctica and Russia and Canada have fully (and smoothly!) frozen over offering us the possibility of a 4-race New Ice Age series in our trusted no-PL DN machines. Our first leg takes us 2600nm from Svalbard’s Longyearbyen east to North Alaska’s Browerville. You’ll be a few days on the ice, so dress warmly and take some provisions; go!
Race #1968
INFOby brainaid.de
DN PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: NIA - SYC
RACE CLOSE: Monday,
February 2 at 2300 UTC.
Race starts: Jan 22nd 07:00 Registration Closed
▶ Flash
GO TO RACE

Cross the Convergence 2026 - Robinson Crusoe to Galapagos


Welcome to our first race of a new series of ocean voyages across the World’s convergence zones, this first race taking you north from south of the Tropic of Capricorn to the Equator-straddling Galapagos, home of magical iguanas and other exotic fauna (but no mythical kings, Dory) Departing from the island where in 1704 adventurer Alexander Selkirk inspired Daniel Defoe to write the best-seller "The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", by debarking off the unsound "HMS Cinque Ports", four months before she foundered off the coast of present-day Colombia, we will sail the 2200nm in our decidedly sounder and faster than the " Cinque Ports",
Ocean 50 !
Race #1983
INFOby brainaid.de
Ocean 50 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: CCZ - SYC
RACE CLOSE: Friday,
January 30 at 2300 UTC.
Race starts: Jan 16th 18:00 Registration Closed
▶ Flash
GO TO RACE

Go to race archive

SYC Ranking

  1. Sailonline Yacht Club Member KaSToR
  2. Sailonline Yacht Club Member WRmirekd
  3. Sailonline Yacht Club Member CriticalHippo
  4. Sailonline Yacht Club Member rafa
  5. Sailonline Yacht Club Member Sax747
  6. Sailonline Yacht Club Member rumskib
  7. Sailonline Yacht Club Member bonknhoot
  8. Sailonline Yacht Club Member vida
  9. Sailonline Yacht Club Member Panpyc
  10. Sailonline Yacht Club Member Kipper1258

View full list

Series

Mobile Client

SYC members have the benefit of access to our mobile/lightweight web client!

The mobile client