A great two-handed EXPEDITION team

I want to introduce to you another two handed team supported by Expedition, Ross and Campbell Field on Hupane  Buckley Systems Limited. Ross and Campbell are currently competing in the Global Ocean Race, a two-handed lap of the globe in boats only 2 feet longer than Coppelia.

I have avidly been watching their position on the internet, working out what course I would try and take for the next 24 hours, seeing where Ross and Campbell go, and how they do.

Ross has just written an excellent article explaining  polar percentages. Polar percentage is the  percentage your current boat speed is of  the predicted boat speed for a given wind speed and direction. For classes such as the Class 40, that Ross is racing detailed predictions (polars) are available from the designer, these are then “tuned” a little for the boat. For Coppelia the process is a little more difficult, as the designer polars are for a straight class boat sailed with crew.

Rob and I now have our NEXUS instruments working, enabling us to have boat speed  ingested into Expedition. With our previous instruments we could not achieve this.

The  percentage difference between our boat speed and our predicted speed for a given wind direction and speed can now be calculated in Expedition. This data is then sent back to our NEXUS server and displayed in the cockpit. If we are not achieving 100% like Ross and Campbell we can start working out why. If we are consistently sailing faster than predicted we can change our polar diagram.

Expedition also enables your track to be shaded by your polar percentage, something I dread, as Rob will be able to check how well I have been going when he wakes up for his watch… No more saying “I was hitting 7’s (knots) a while ago but the wind has dropped” he will know…

 

Progress ….

Last night we successfully installed a new navigation PC, and got it running, Rob has also built permanent storeage for all our electronics, this is  a massive step forward.   After the weekend Neil and I will spend a bit of time tidying up.