Discussion: Race

Wear a 305 and we might conclude how close to the wind you can sail:-). 45 deg apparent as efficiency is so long ago*. I don't manage much better but am spared racing mentality feedback. Best contemporary monohull...c. 25 degrees...?

*ponder the CUTTY SARKS' angle of sail beating around Cape Horn.... There is, undoubtedly, an analysis somewhere.

I have wondered if a 305 would be useful in locating marks when the visibility is poor - which is almost continuously in my incipient cataract state. Would it let you enter a lat and long for a waypoint and then tell you how far away it was and in what direction? We have a simple GPS unit but it can be hard to read on starboard tack, especially when wearing polarized sunglasses.

Sigh, cataracts...another contender along with fog and the fogging of the mind, too.
Not sure if it could do that. Certainly the GPS's I have on the boat can - one is quite simple, 10 yrs old. Racing can be so analytical: distance & bearing to mark, degrees off apparent wind when beating, any current, SOG/COG, what else? well there's the boat, even in a one design race class. Maybe more to think about than O but at least not out of breath while doing it.

And sometimes you haven't a clue as to why you did well. Did you find a pocket of wind that no one else did? Did the wind shift in your direction? Did you steer better? This was the case last Wednesday in light winds when we finished first. We did beat one boat on navigation because he didn't pick up the last minute change of course.

Modern boats can sail 25 degrees to the wind?? That's very impressive! Any experience I have (and I was never much of a sailor, but I did a moderate amount of sub-standard sailing on small boats), 45 degrees was about as good as I could get. Not that I had any sort of modern boat --- but 25 degrees is far better than anything I ever experiences.

I think you would have to pay a lot of money for a boat with that capability. And because all boats are compromises, you'd also be giving up something significant in the design.