Sorry, don't mind me. I was just trying to figure out how to make sense of the figures. But I guess it doesn't really matter one way or the other, because I don't think much can really be determined from a long-distance race, as far as achievable speeds in optimal conditions.
I`m sure there are many other cases where cat-sailors sailed a known distance between two points in a given time, so their average speed over that distance can be calculated ? Then we don`t have to get into lengthy conversations of how GPS do/don`t work, their accuracy, battery life, etc ! What about historical data from legs of the Worrell / Tybee 500 / Atlantic 500 races, which are sailed on damn fast boats ?
Steve
Okay, here is one for you, Steve to get your thread back on track. This is an excerpt from a story in Catamaran Sailor about the 1998 Key Largo Steeplechase:
"In steady, screaming-reach winds of 20 mph, the Key Largo Steeplechase's long-standing speed record was broken by every boat that finished. The previous record of 7 hours, 58 minutes was broken by more than two hours.
"Enrique Rodriguez and Hans Meijer sailed their new Worrell 1000, Nacra 6.0NA to a new record for the 110-mile course of 5 hours, 4 minutes, 25 seconds, an average speed of 19.5 mph. Meijer said their GPS was registering some pretty steady 29 mph speeds."
And here is some more historical data:
Record for the Sandusky Steeplechase (Sandusky, OH to Put-in-Bay, OH on Lake Erie) is about 57 minutes, and that distance is supposedly about 21 miles. It was done on a Nacra 6.0 NA that used a Hooter for about two-thirds of the distance and main-jib on a reach for the last third, except for a beat to the finish line once they got to the Bay. Wind was 15-20. The time could have been a few minutes faster if not for the beat to the finish and some time lost during a near pitchpole when the crew made an excursion around the forestay.
And, of course, with that wind Lake Erie is not exactly flat water.
And, of course, we don't know the actual distance sailed in that 57 minutes because they did not sail directly point to point on the open-lake portion of the race.
