Virtual Vendee Globe...

[Tim]

It's pretty obvious I am caught in a time warp,  ;)

I'm sailing in the last twelve hour wind period, while the rest of the fleet goes on.
What I am just wondering is if this will continue into the next change.

[ronc98]

I have noticed differences from what the PC application says and their mobile application.   

Is there a damage function to this, say if you get caught with alot of sail area in alot of wind?   It would be find of cool if they had a demasting penalty.

[Joe Pyrat]

My understanding is the only thing taken into account is wind and angle to the wind.  Currents, damage, crew health, etc are not simulated.

[Tim]

My understanding is the only thing taken into account is wind and angle to the wind.  Currents, damage, crew health, etc are not simulated.

They certainly don't consider crew health, the caffeine alone is killing me  ;D

[ronc98]

On a scale this size it would be pretty tough, but it would make things interesting if you had the possibility of getting mast / sail damage.   If you to much sail in heavy wind you loss that sail.   

This free so I am not complaining,  It has sucked a considerable about of time from me already.

[dnice]

From what I understand, this race was practically a last minute decision. It was based on the virtual volvo ocean race, but it would be free and therefore less features.
The volvo game has sail damage, currents, crew issues and all that stuff that we would like to see, but it also cost money to join and buying the extra packages is a necessity.

At first they said we would deal with currents and sleep scheduling and things like that...but we know now it is 100% wind and nothing else..

Its my guess that they were planning on upgrading the game as they went along, but became overwhelmed with all the unexpected participants.
They were pretty surprised to reach 100,000 players, now its well over 200,000 and they are struggling just to keep the game running.

[Godot]

If you use too big a sail in too much wind, it appears to just not work.  I found the light spinnaker to be useless in very heavy wind.

[Manannan]

My understanding is the only thing taken into account is wind and angle to the wind.  Currents, damage, crew health, etc are not simulated.

They certainly don't consider crew health, the caffeine alone is killing me  ;D

Right now, imagine the suffering of one of them (the real racer) having a broken leg. He won't get any help before Sunday morning if the Australian Navy can get to him in the rough weather. He is expecting 40 to 50 knts. ..

[maxiSwede]

I haven't tried this one out but I'll probably will...

It's a non-commercial site where you can't 'buy extras' to keep you ahead of your fellow sailing man or woman and it's made up in opensource Linux environment... all very appealing to me, and I would expect, from my fellow SailFAr'ers aswell.

www.virtual-loup-de-mer.org


I'll definetely want to finsish this Vendee Glober first though.

It's sooo sweet to  do it without getting cold, wet or sleep-deprivated - not to mention having to spend several days onboard - alone - with a broken leg. Oucccchhh!  ::)

[ronc98]

question about the gates.   From what I have read I have to travel  through the gates in the correct direction.  Just traveling north of them does not validate them.  Is this correct?

[skylark]

You have to leave any part of the gates on your starboard side.  If your position is due north of any part of the gates, you have passed the gate properly.  There is a page on the website which describes this in more detail, look for the scrolling text on the bottom of the page.

[Bill NH]

The gate buoys will turn green when you have "validated" the gate...

I've noticed that the data for other boats often does not update as fast as my own info.  Usually what you are seeing for your boat is correct while other boat's data can be hours behind, and its not uniform.  Last night I sailed past Destremau while his boat was DIW, but he was still displaying 500 places ahead of me.  Then he finally updated in the night and he was back ahead again.    ???

Good thing we're not match racing, where it would be really important to know what your opponents are doing!

As an aside, a tip I've found helpful to view the long term weather forecast (beyond 36 hrs) is to display the weather to the west of my boat.  As everything moves W to E down here one can get a better picture of what's developing for the next couple days...

[CapnK]

Seems like part of the strategy has become:

Decide on a good course for the post-wind-update changes about 1/2 hour *before* the wind update, and set your boat accordingly. It seems to take at least 30 minutes to get the actual update due to server congestion and response times. I got kinda screwed by that night before last...

Of course, with the loads they are getting, the congestion and slowness is to be understood. :) Itis a small miracle that the server doesn't just blow up twice daily, lol.

I've noticed that now I am bumping against ~20,000th place, the numbers take a lot longer to reach. Instead of gaining lots and lots, hundreds of positions at a time, I only gain 5-15. Must be lots of relatively hard-core sailors up in the 'front' 10% of the race. So it doesn't seem that there will be any big shake-ups in the order of the players from now until post-Horn, but I think that the trip up the Atlantic might prove to be a very interesting and fun time. :)

Only a little over 7,000 places to gain, and I can catch up to Skylark... ;D

[Tim]

I have a feeling my experience of being trapped in the previous wind chart, thereby losing quite a bit of sea was a result of trying to repeatedly load the new wind chart. I now do like you suggest either make my move before or wait past the half hour.

[CapnK]

There's a guy from France I have been racing closely and steadily, "robinsailor". We started about the same time, at the gate before last he was literally just ahead of me (boats overlapping onscreen), and covered my every move with his own to hold me off. Then one night he had something to do, and let his wife steer for a few hours...

Oops!

She dove south for several hours when I went East, and I picked up a couple of squares before he could recover. :) I wound up being about 5 squares ahead of him with some favorable winds.

Now he's a little more than halfway between you and I, about 2.5 squares behind. That congestion got me the other night, before I started doing the "1/2 hour" strategy, and he picked up almost 3 squares to be where he is now. Sucks, I was starting to be able to relax just a little. ;)

[skylark]

Your best bet is to race against the wind and not the ranking or other players.  I do check in on others to try to learn from them, like how fast they can go with a certain sail and what wind angle they are on.

The reality is you have to steer a path to the best winds and it is sometimes guesswork. 

My theory on the rankings is that they are calculated based on the number of miles since a player started, so those who started early can have a higher ranking even if they are in the same position as a late starter.  Also, I think the miles traveled is measured by the point on the track through which a line perpendicular to the track passes through your vessel ??? not sure if that is clear.  They may subtract the distance between the track and your vessel as well.

If you need to make south to get good wind, and get discouraged because of the ranking loss, you might make a bad decision if you put too much stock in the ranking.

Your chance to make better progress than me is coming up because there is a low wind zone coming up right over the gate and I have no choice but to sail to it and through it.  Bad luck for me.  But I have had good wind for a few days so I shouldn't complain.

[dnice]

If you need to make south to get good wind, and get discouraged because of the ranking loss, you might make a bad decision if you put too much stock in the ranking.

Yep, thats exactly what happened to me when everyone I was 'racing' turned east and I was still a few hundred miles from the forties...

I think the ranking is based on your distance from the finish, but it is somehow figured into the proposed route (rhumb line) as well...

I usually get home an hour after the pm update so that one doesn't matter much to me... Its the 4am update that is killing me! I wake up around 9am so I'm usually floundering around for 5 hours or so before I can adjust my sails.

Capn'k is right, the race north will be quite interesting :)

[Tim]

Well I'm about to give up on the race and maybe turn left when I get to NZ and look for a nice island ;)

Once again for some reason the winds did not change for my boat and I am working with about 10 knots less wind than I should be :( 

So just as it looked like I was about to close in on CapnK once again he is going to distance me. 
I figure he must have bribed some Frenchman with  cheap West Indies Rum! ;D


15:30 PM  It appears that they have now changed so I am back on the Capn's tail  8)

[ronc98]

I have finally made it to some nice wind and looking at the weather pattern I should be fine for a few days.   I have went from 230000 to just under 164000 in the last few days.   There must be a ton of boats back here with me.

So what is the times the weather is updated?  9pm and 4am?  are there others?

[dnice]

I have finally made it to some nice wind and looking at the weather pattern I should be fine for a few days.   I have went from 230000 to just under 164000 in the last few days.   There must be a ton of boats back here with me.

So what is the times the weather is updated?  9pm and 4am?  are there others?

"Starting tomorrow (Thursday) the windcharts will be updated.in the game at 11h00 (GMT+1) and again at 23h00 (GMT+1)."

I think that means 1000gmt and 2200gmt..

around here thats 4am and 4pm (-6GMT).