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Scarlet Oyster - Scarlet Enterprise Captains log Day 10 ARC 2015



Sat in front of the computer, thought I could write something to occupy
myself!

It was brought to my attention a while back that our sail number 1702T is
remarkably close to the registration number of the 'Starship Enterprise
allegedly '1701T', I've never managed to find out if this is infact true,
but if it is it may suggest we have 'warp speed' at our disposal. I have
spent 25years sailing on Scarlet, there are a couple of switches for which I
have yet to find their purpose, perhaps that's what they are for?! This
warp speed would appear to be our only hope if we are to stand a chance of
beating the mighty VO65 Brunel on IRC corrected time!

100' supermaxi 'Leopard's' record last year rose the bar very significantly
from previously, so to better that in a 'production' 65' racing boat is
mighty impressive! It was pretty clear from the get go that they were going
for it, our lead off the start line lasted under a minute, when you consider
we were 30seconds ahead of them off the line, it was plain to see their
speed was over double ours! Had they been able to sail across without the
need to gybe back and forth (or zig zag I think is the tech term), their
time could have been much much faster still.

This years ARC has enjoyed generally reliable typical trade winds, great for
boats such as Scarlet, the downside for the modern planning machines is that
it ensures that they can never point straight at the mark, so have to sail a
lot of distance, getting up and planning does more than compensate for this
however, and it seems a VO65 is more than fast enough to make up for this!

Another benefit is that it gives navigators a much larger canvas on which
they can work, as they can sail their unusual VMG angle yet still get to one
side or other of the course very quickly, potentially avoiding light winds
and even awkward cloud systems without further distance being added to their
track. Our initial routing said Starboard gybe for November and Port Gybe
for december, the computer put the gybe at 2345 UT on the 30th of November,
the actual has been a bit more complicated, and we have lost count of gybes
now, can only tell that it is an even number as we started on port and are
on port again now!

Anyway back to our warp button! All we need to do now is sail a
comparatively (compared to Brunel) conservative 13kn average and the 1st
overall IRC is ours for the taking, our routing is suggesting 100% polars
will give us a little over 8knots (without warp), so as long as the warp
speed almost doubles that pace we should be fine, any information anyone has
on this would be appreciated!

It would appear we have as always to focus on our class, we appear to have a
healthy lead in IRC b, to win that would be a great achievement for our
team, who have all worked tirelessly over the last 10days to keep Scarlet
charging forward at full (non warp) pace.

It has been quite astonishing to see the increase in skill level from the
beginning to now, we now have a team of drivers trimmers and sailors that
can sail the boat in total darkness in squalls with a large spinnaker
without needing me to be involved! Any feedback from me now is more trying
to help with subtle tricks to gain increasingly smaller increments of speed
(and control!).

The downside is that I am now pretty well redundant! Mark as always does a
great job running the boat, so not much to do there either, I have got
better at playing Scrabble on the I pad though!

We are now 945mile from the finish line, so we are ahead of any previous
passage times for Scarlet on the ARC (2011,2012,2013,2014).

Just 10 mins to the 4 hourly position report is out, at around 2 mins to the
sched those off watch start to gather around the nav area to get a first
glimpse of the outcome of the previous 4hrs graft, hopefully it will say we
have averaged 13knots, or our target will get faster still!

Best go look for that warp button!

All for now from the happy ship team Scarlet!

Ross





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