Nordic Stars

Blog

Notes from building Nordic Stars: how the numbers are computed, and how a crew uses them on the water.

  1. Race Control is in the Exocet user manual

    What the Exocet user manual now documents in its chapter on third-party software: the prerequisites, the configuration at each end, the variables Race Control sends under the group name NordicStars, and the variables it reads from the Exocet.

  2. The start report: what the gun measures

    How the line is built from the pings, what distance and time to the line are at the gun, how a race with no recorded gun still gets a start, and which numbers the report prints as recorded rather than recomputed.

  3. Weather offshore: corridors, bundles and the routed path

    Why a forecast is clipped to a corridor around the route, what comes down the button at the dock, how the tablet reads it with the antenna down, and what PATH AHEAD does with two models aboard.

  4. What a tack costs: manoeuvre loss measured against the boat’s own polar

    Where a manoeuvre window begins and ends, what the metres it costs are measured against, how the ranking and the season reference in the manoeuvres report are built, and what the printed sheet says it was all measured against.

  5. Pre-start with four values: CURRENT, TARGET, ROUTED and SPEED

    What each of the four answers on Race Control’s TIME TO LINE card is computed from, what the burn above them measures, and what AIM, PERF and KILL change in the last minutes before the gun.

  6. How to calibrate the instruments, and how the upwash table is computed

    Why a boat is calibrated compass first, boat speed second and wind last, what Guided Calibration measures and what it declines to do, and how a measured step across the tack becomes a wind-angle correction table.

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