Been playing with a pretty cool tool called GPS Action Replay.

Here's a screen shot of a track recorded during my single-handed test sail yesterday:



The winds were picking up and I chickened out from doing a spinnaker run on this downwind leg (though I do have a track from an earlier run in lighter breeze I'm analyzing).

Note that the polar seems a bit lopsided. This is likely due to the moderate swell being nearly head on during port tacks to weather and side on during starboard weather tacks. Downwind I was able to do quite a lot of surfing on port, but not on starboard. The polar reflects this. Also note the tool has no way of knowing the true wind at any given moment, so I basically just estimated it at 270 deg. Wind was ranging around 10-13 kts and rising as time went on.


Mike.