2024 18ft Worlds 05.03. Race 1

Race Area

Some left wind in the channel, bending in at the start line. Right shift mostly at the top mark. Tricky place to sail around and under Shark Beach. Pretty skewed area.

Start

With a bias of 20 degrees, there is only one place to start. It is so much better to have a bad start at the pin than to do a good one at the RC. 113m of upwind distance between the two.

Already at the gun Finport was 104 m of upwind distance ahead of Marine O. Andoo did a quick tack and was gaining after the start. ASCC could have popped up on port nicely, but they were far too late to be there on time.

1st Upwind

The wind was shifting mostly to the left after the start. Andoo crossed behind Finport and ahs cought very big left shift. Also was the only one getting to the left with the right shift. So was leading the pack by a huge margin. Finport had pretty bad angle on the way left, quite in a right shift.

Suggested Wind direction, based on the tracks of the boats. 10 degrees left than the start.

1st upwind stats. Graph shows time to leader. Finport with very steep drop, having the hardest time to get to the mark.

VMG colored tracks.

The pretty bad angle of Finport
Two big lifts for Andoo
Very low angle of Victoria, losing throughout the leg.

Top Mark

Most of the boats in the back went hard over the layline.

50m to and from the mark stats, Andoo doing it in 35 seconds, Lazarus in almost a minute.

1st Downwind

Pretty skewed course, due to the left shift. 3.3 times more sailing on starboard than on port. Not many passing opportunities.

All the boats except Victoria were faster than the leader. Andoo fell out of breeze and had to luff hard.

Leeward Rounding

Victoria gybed late and allowed ASCC to jump inside. Lazarus also went pretty wide.

2nd Upwind

The course was again pretty skewed with 2:1 ratio.

Boats hitting the right shore low had a hard time to get to the top mark. Marine O also had extremely low angle on long port tack. ASCC picked up the best lane and hit the point with a solid righty to get around the top mark. Andoo has increased the lead with the best upwind.

Hard time at the right shore
Low angle of Marine O
Left wind and good lift for ANDOO and ASCC

2nd Top Mark

2nd Downwind

Skewed downwind without much opportunities to attack. More/less following.

2nd Leeward Rounding

Some boats going quite wide before rounding the mark.

3rd Upwind

Marine O again struggling with the angle. Boats slowing down at the right. Andoo with the fastest upwind, but quite slow 2nd part. ASCC with pretty bad tack, catching up the loss on Marine O after by going higher.