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Board » Flag Officers » Race proposals » Santa Monica Nueva Regatta

I think the bottle of Ron Miel has fallen by the wayside at this stage, so why not rename this iconic race Nueva, and take the opportunity to make some course changes for longer legs and more strategic choices and less processional races, as per the attached and set up here on the Beta: http://beta.sailonline.org/breezy/run/987/
Clipping along
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Hi Jan,

Saw your comments on the chat.
I wasn't here when those races were done 5 or 10 years ago. But I believe SOLing has evolved because routing (QT) has become better and more participants have learned to use it well. Some races, like this one, may need to be adjusted to avoid too much point to point sailing where the stretches between islands or waypoints are only 3 hours, so the optimal course becomes too fixed.
Even during the race I was thinking already that the Tenerife Offshore waypoint is unneeded and without it there would have been choice to go from Lobos to La Palma in any way you want (could pass N or S of Tenerife depending on WX).
When stretches are longer than 6 hours the races tend to become more varied. And it allows for more sleep in a lot of cases. Coastal navigation every 4 hours is hard to keep up for a week for people with working lives (never mind social lives:)

I am a fan of always using islands for turns rather than buoys. Sometimes there are no islands of course. So, in this case, throwing Tenerife Offshore out, and replacing Selvagem Grande with a turn around Madeira would still keep it a one week race if a slightly faster boat is used.
There are countless ways to set up a course using Canary islands + Madeira. You pic is an example. I think from Hiero I would turn directly to Alegranza next and then Fuertevantura. So, simply: Santa Monica > Madeira > Hiero > Alegranza > Fuerteventura > Santa Monica.
That's enough waypoints for a one week race and the weather will serve up some coastal navigation to do anyway. But then we can blame the weather, not the race designer for the lost sleep ;-)
Yep, Dan, that's another option and I agree with you on all points:
- hate marks in the sea
- more people using routing
AND importantly
- Qt Vlm router now uses 'SOL' interpolation (u/v), so wind in router matches wind in SOL exactly.
Clipping along

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