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Board » General Discussion » OCEAN CHAMPIONSHIP RACES

Posted by
SCARABOCCHIO


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97
Registered at
2012-02-05 16:24:16
2025-04-07 08:36:51 - OCEAN CHAMPIONSHIP RACES
I think it is useful to define some "rules" to make the “Ocean Championship Races” more competitive and able to offer more opportunities to follow alternative routes.

Assuming that there must be courses between a “Point A and a Point B” without intermediate buoys, the discussion mainly concerns the "rules" regarding duration time, distance and boat.

I invite you to express your opinion regarding these topics of discussion:

- Ocean Race Duration Time

- Start/Finish Distance

- Presence of Natural Obstacles near the Start and Finish Line

- Suggestions about Favorite Boats for Ocean Races

I personally believe that:
- To have more interesting and competitive Ocean races, it's essential that the duration is approximately three weeks.
With NOAA 16-day gribs you can calculate routes to the finish line and, consequently, everyone follows more or less the same route.
If the grib stops a week before the expected arrival, it becomes interesting to study the evolution of the weather to identify the right WP to face the last week of the race.

- Be at least 4,000/4,500 nm long, (obviously from A to B without intermediate buoys).

- Any natural obstacles don't create problems, unless they are close to the start and finish lines.

- No favorite boats, it is only important that performance boat is adequate to the distance and the time of 20/25 days expected to complete the race.

FW all.
Carlo ALberto
Posted by
ITA210


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Posts
7
Registered at
2011-11-07 11:40:59
2025-04-09 20:30:55 - Re: OCEAN CHAMPIONSHIP RACES
Hi, here my 5 cents.
I agree that duration should not be less than 3 weeks so to avoid getting full routing from the very beginning until finish line. This might come from the mix between boat, lenght and average winds. I like races where we have to take bold decisions on which route to take and where we have multiple routes possible. I believe landmasses well placed are very helpful on forcing decisions on which direction to take. The last Christmas2Christmas was e nice case where we had to take a decision right at the start, mine was wrong and wrong and wrong but I liked the race. Also the Melbourne to Osaka with the Solomon in the middle forced us to take decisions on which canal to take (here I made a good mistake that sent me on the right way).
Would be also interesting to have 2 or more boats possible for the same race. This might also result in races with boats spread around with, hopefully, strong fights for winning the race until the end.
Most important: THANK YOU to all the people designing the races and taking care of all the other aspects. We can improve but there is a solid work done in the background! Sometimes races might not be perfect but the work done is huge and I am always happy to race in SOL.
BV,
ITA210

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