Navigation

Choosing and Configuring a Computer for a Boat

Michael Moradzadeh, PCYC Communications Chair.
Former Director of Home Architecture at Intel Corporation

Instruments expert Peter King shares his advice and experience

Slides from Chris' talk.  Draws on prior material including articles on navigation and squalls.

Mike Dvorak has taken his PhD in wind energy and turned it into some very effective weather analysis.  He discusses the tools available to you and the likely conditions he will encounter.

There are many tools and systems available for your trip.  Lew tells you about many of the options and describes their use. 

Stan Honey’s

See the powerpoint!  We have added Stan's 2016 slides as well.  Updated, but without narration.

Agenda:

 Don’t screw up at the start

 Get to the Synoptic Wind before the glass-off the first night.

 Pick and race to your Ridge Waypoint.

 Carefully deal with Cutoff Lows

 Slot-cars to the shift, ideally on “Ocean DW” angles

 Squalls and Cloud Streets in the trades

 Pick the correct corner on the Run

 Approaching the Finish

Jim Antrim discusses coastal safety. Waves, created and driven by wind, heap up and break near land. Staying in water at least 2.5 times wave+swell height represents a start for prudent sailing as you come near open shores.Listen to the audio:

Ever wonder how a navigator might prepare for a big race like the Pac Cup?  In this navigation systems article, Lew walks us through the tools he might use for crossing the Pacific.  The topics covered include grib files, weather forecast charts, navigation software, instruments and more.   Best of all, Stan Honey contributed to the article his insight on computer routing around the Pacific High.

For those using routing software like Expedition or Deckman, consider the following: Computer routes suggest courses that are too close to highs when sailing around them downwind, but it isn’t due to any bugs or defects in the polars, software, or grib files.