Volvo Ocean Race – report from sailonline.org 10 Oct 2008

The wind has been dropping slowly all day, which has reduced the excitement a bit. A few people took Delayed Command gambles for the night watch – one or two paid off, but others were disastrous.

Mine would have lost me more than the four places it did if I hadn’t been woken at 06:00 local time by my dogs getting excited about something outside – deer or foxes, usually.

I was sailing into a zone of failing wind, and hastily changed course to go looking for the breeze. I lost a bit more during the day when I had to set a compass course to avoid Gran Canaria, forcing me to deviate from the maximum speed course I had been following. There is going to be a very large number of boats way past the Canaries by the time we get teleported back to the start – I don’t know what energy source our hosts use, but it had better be big.

One topic of conversation that kept recurring was the ‘Official’ Volvo online race. I think I’ll have to sign on over there to see for myself, but the general consensus was that its simulation of wind and boat direction and speed was less satisfying. It would appear that the model is coarser, with steps from cell to cell and less precise boat controls.

From what I am hearing, I’d guess that the Official race application is designed as a game, with fancy graphics, sound and performance-enhancing options. In a typical game, you would earn the credits with which to buy these ‘weapons’, but here you pay real money at the beginning of the race. No-one seems to be sure whether you can wait until you are in trouble and then buy what you need…

The Sail On Line application, by contrast, is primarily a weather simulator being traversed by boat models whose only controls are immediate or delayed commands to sail either a compass course or a course relative to the true wind. The boat will always sail at its optimum speed, with no sail change or sail trimming input need from the player.

I’d say that the Official Race will appeal primarily to game players, and the Sail On Line simultaor will appeal primarily to people who actually sail, whether they are experienced or comparative novices. Horses for courses.

Not all of the Sail On Line competitors (of which there are 530 registered as I write this) will be at their computers when the race starts at 11:00 UTC tomorrow. Several of them will be sailing their real boats, having set Delayed Commands to the best of their ability, based on weather forecast shown in the simuator for the appropriate times. In practice, that shouldn’t be too chancy – there won’t be headwinds, so no tacking, and the winds won’t be very stong, so the boats are less likely to plough up the beach in North Africa.

Of course, it could all change…