Save on Sail Club Membership

If you've been thinking about joining the Sail Club - now is a great time. Great location, professionally maintained modern boats, active sailing programs and knowledgeable staff. 
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Get a 10% discount on Sail Club membership*. The offer is good till February 15th, 2021. Bonus - If you get a referral from an active Sail Club member - you and your referror will get a $100 credit as well. 

If you've been thinking about joining the Sail Club - now is a great time. Great location, professionally maintained modern boats, active sailing programs and knowledgeable staff. 

Sail Better, Sail Brooklyn

Enroll now

*Subject to membership acceptance. Excludes Enrollment Fees and Discovery Level Membership. Not applicable to installment plans.

It's already February and spring is in the air. Racing teams are beginning to solidify their crew rosters. We have at least three new teams forming and some legacy teams are looking to bolster their crews.

Boats will be assigned to skippers who have 5 people on their team (members with racing privileges) as per the Notice of Race.

Crew information will be shared with skippers looking for crew.

https://sc.bbsailclub.com/racing/racing-boat-assignments/

https://sc.bbsailclub.com/racing/racing-crew-list/

The real life Vendee Globe participants/heros have reached home port. Unlike the real life sailors, arm chair sailors like myself managed to tag along for the ride with the Virtual Regatta game.

Although its just a game, there were real sailing applications, here are some things that I learnt along the way.

• It was a long ride. Around 83 days over Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. Checking progress and sail configuration in the morning and afternoons (and sometimes in between). You need to be a little obsessive to play the game with paying for features. At he It was nice to finish it all.
• It was great to do it with a team. Some obvious questions were asked and it was nice that some team members would ask where I was going when I off course as a polite nudge to keep me attentive.

• No need to purchase extra additional boat features from virtual regatta - although they did their best to peddle improvements over the course of the race. I did choose the light air sails in the free package
• There were several options on setting the course
  • Setting waypoint or compass heading
  • Setting a constant true wind angle
  • Following a routing program (need to pay after 2 course changes) . Used this to see alternate paths towards a waypoint
  • Change the course according to pre-determined timing
• I used the automatic sail selection whenever I remembered - it was only good for 24 hours so you had to check back in the game frequently.
• Needed a good understanding of the polars for my boat. Often I would set a course that had the max speed. I was surprised how fast the boat went on the wind. Downwind -  At the end, I learnt how to gybe the boat for max VMG - not sure this technique would have worked in the other parts of the course.
• Needed to pay attention when setting any automatic course - you can hit land and ice boundaries. 
• Yes, the red line in the Southern Ocean demarcates an ice line where boat speed is reduce.
• Never did really understand the white course line and how they calculated the Distance to Finish (and boat rankings)
• This was a nice tour of the world. There are little islands around the course that I did not know existed. I might even go back and investigate all the back stories on them,
• I often wondered if currents were factored into the simulation. Before the start it would be good to do some initial routing for at least 1 week or so out. I didn't follow Alex Thompson westerly at the beginning and lost several thousand places in the first few weeks.

Thank you Adam Holmes and Jason Shell who helped encourage the ONE15 band of Virtual Vendee sailors. I finished 115,896 out of 1,080,759 participants. I had fun over the winter.

The Notice of Race for the 2021 Evening Racing Series has been issued. This is Club member racing at its best. We have a fleet of 6 Melges 24s and 7 J/80s. Racing is scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. All new teams are currently being allocated to Wednesday evenings. We have existing teams looks to bolster their teams and new teams forming.

Weekend racing will consist of formal regattas and Saturday Fleet Captain racing. All levels of experience are welcome at the Club.

The Racing Rules of Sailing have been modified for 2021-2024 - the Olympic event cycle. 

Some significant rules changes:

• A boat starts and finishes when any part of her hull crosses the line – the crew and equipment are no longer used for this purpose.
• New definition Sail the Course, which defines the string rule (previously part of rule 28).
• Clarification of the mark-room rule. Rule 18.1

A great review of the changes by Dave Perry can be found here.

Useful Links: These are the racing rules for 2021-2024: Start with The Racing Rules of Sailing, some of those rules are modified in the U.S. by the US Prescriptions. Rules are interpreted by the US Sailing and World Sailing Appeals Book and Case Book.

World Sailing - The Racing Rules of Sailing
US Sailing - US Prescriptions
US Sailing - Appeal Book
World Sailing - Case Book

Renew your membership with US Sailing? Use this link and get a discount on US Sailing membership dues.

https://www1.ussailing.org/membership/MPP/Default.aspx?ycid=742699S