Europa Cup 2015 Travemunde

[Arne GER76]

First start will definitely be on Sunday, as planned!

Hope to see all of you there!

More Info here: http://www.travemuender-woche.com
For online entry check: http://www.travemuender-woche.com/en/ra ... index.html
For accomodation check: http://www.travemuender-woche.com/en/ra ... index.html

All the best,
Arne

[dave.timson]

Just a reminder for those people intending on travelling to Travemunde who have not yet entered.

The Early bird reduced entry fee expires on Monday 15th June.

[Arne GER76]

It is just one week left for your entries!
I am still missing some names on the list

The early bird deadline has been extended, but will expire today!
Make your entries now!!!

We are looking forward to seeing you in Travemünde!

[Arne GER76]

For those who can not join the party in Travemuende: You can follow racing here: http://tw2015.sapsailing.com/gwt/Home.html…
There will be gps live-tracking and also some video coverage in certain races.

The Europa Cup trophy has found its way back to us and waits for a new International Canoe Europa Cup winner.

[chrishampe]

So is anyone other than Mr Stebbing and myself here yet?

[RobB]

In the queue for the ferry at Dover, 0220 sailing. See you tomorrow!

[jimc]

I've put links to everything I can find, including results and tracking pages, on the Europa 2015 page on http://www.intcanoe.org, so friends and relatives can use that as a base. Anything I've missed let me know or post on the forum here (and it will also appear on the front page of http://www.intcanoe.org).

[chrishampe]

From my post on the class Facebook page...

Travemunde day 1 started with a chain of postponements as the ratio of rain to wind was a long way from what is desired for canoe sailing. At 13:00 the race committee decided we would start at 14:00 so frantic activity began to launch the fleet and get to the start on time.
When the race eventually started it was Robin Wood who led at the first mark from Gareth Caldwell and Arne Stahl. Robin however failed to round the leeward mark correctly and dropped to the middle of the fleet. The wind had also dropped and the the run was a very slow affair as boats constantly changed places based on who found that magic bit of wind.
The start of the final triangle saw the wind shift to the right and leaving the leading bunch becalmed many of the back markers caught up including Robin Wood who once again had the lead at the final windward mark.
As the front of the fleet approached the gybe mark the wind looked like it was going to fill from the south but the race committee had other ideas and the race was abandoned with all boats sent home. So unfortunately day one is a boring scoreless draw although with Robin Wood's light air performance it does not look like this one will go to penalties.

[tonymarston]

Tomorrow (Thursday), International Canoe racing is featuring live on Travemunde Week's Youtube channel.

http://tw2015.sapsailing.com/gwt/Home.h ... 8057365e57

Thanks to Andy Rice for this info.

[jimc]

Thanks for the headsup Tony. If you are using a device with a You tube client like a phone or tablet it might be easier to find it direct on Youtube vie the Sap Sports channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCnT7y ... dIaxn_2dvA .

The recorded programms is at :-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKQkZvlylfQ

Canoe coverage starts at about 2:20:00.

There's some great quality footage there, even if, unfortunately, they weren't very windy races.

Robin Wood is now firmly in the driving seat, but could yet finish out of the medals.
According to my sums Gareth Caldwell is guaranteed at least silver unless he gets a DND or something.
Bronze is wide open.

[Perham]

This event was for me a revelation of what tracking technology can do. See http://tw2015.sapsailing.com/gwt/Home.h ... Canoe%20IC. We need to learn more about some of the data capture - did Phil Robin really do 49.5 knots at one point? - but this a treasure trove of information which can tell us a huge amount about the way we sail and how we can improve.

And the sailing was good, too, although the conditions presented the race officers with some tricky questions that with hindsight could have been answered better: race 5, the third back-to-back race on the windiest day, had 7 starters (out of 24) and 4 finishers. Was that a good call for anyone except Chris Hampe?

Many thanks to Arne and to all of the German IC and Taifun sailors who helped make this a great week (and lowered the average helm age by about 10 years at a conservative estimate).

PS: just going back to the tracking data, do you know who your your new car is talking to, and what it's telling them?

[jimc]

I have a waterproof smart phone and use it to do a fair bit of tracking. My record speed is 32 knots: it was a leap about 100 feet to windward when I was on a beam reach, and was followed by another similar leap back again - in other words there was an anomalous reading. The trouble is glitches like that happen all the time to a greater or lesser extent, and although you can reduce their effect by taking averages over longer periods it still has an effect.

Some very odd things happened on the SAP tracking: this screenshot shows all the boats taking leaps to and fro.



I think they have somehow compensated for this in the final tracks. One leg on race 10 was highly spectacular on the live screen, with the boats literally dancing from side to side every second!

On the other hand the traces can be very revealing indeed. I discovered that on my boat I was getting better vmg on runs sailing so deep that the jib was hardly effective rather than sailing a hotter angle and having the jib working well. Extending on that I have since discovered that if I pole the jib way out to windward using the dangly pole so the flow is reversed (like a Laser running by the lee) I get better speed yet, which has convinced me that I need to follow the others who have got the club footed jib, but that I need to have a method of keeping it goose winged.

Have you guys checked out the video from the live coverage? It starts here. It would be wonderful to have copies of the on board video from Gareth and Robin to extract manouvers for the web site.

I've got a preliminary report up on the International web site, but its 99% based on on line tracking. I desperately need to hear what was really going on. Post here, send me pms or email, whatever, but lets have the tales. What happened to Gareth in race 3? How come the race tracking shows Phil sailing to within yards of the finish in race 5, but is then scored DNC? How windy was that race? The chart shows it going up to 19 knots, but how gusty was it? What was the sea state like? What happened to Chris in Race 8?

Incidentally its possible to organise tracking for events in the UK. I know Simon Lovesey from Sailracer does a lot of that. The price I've seen on line I was "from £20 per boat". I imagine its rather more for smaller fleets. The thing that would really fascinate me, though, would be to do some very structured test/training sessions with tracking with a view to measuring the performance of different designs. I suspect though that's a level of geekdom few others would be interested in.

[CharlieC]

Hi Jim, I can write a report Saturday once I have caught up on my sleep if no one else is?

[Dreamcatcher]

I'll do the first line for you Charlie:

' There was a port end bias to the start line.........'

[CharlieC]

......except for races 4 and 6, otherwise it was an awesome week of port flyers. The sun generally shone, the sausages were excellent, the beer and parties even better...