
Post by
YourMomSA | 2021-02-13 | 15:45:21
These events are all about the start time, and getting lucky with the weather for the 30 days or so after what you can see in the forecast for your start.
Ironman was still the leader at the equator return, with 38:20, right up until OgeR and a few others arrived at the front of the pack that includes misterdjul, me, Slystar, BooBill, and everyone else who started within the 5 days before me or the ~12 hours after me and sailed well enough to not miss any major weather systems.
With that said... the biggest skill factor is to be among the boats who started last but to still make the same critical transition as those ahead of you. The later you start, the harder that is to do. I'd bet that there are plenty of boats who started near SlyStar, but missed some transitions and are a day or more behind him.
Anyway, my point in bringing up Ironman is... Boats in our pack are as much as 3.5 days faster than him to the equator return, but NO ONE posted a better time than him until the front of our immediate pack (near OgeR) arrived. This implies that NO ONE who started in the 3.5 days before SlyStar (3 days before me) was able to stay significantly ahead of this pack. The weather forced everyone who started within the 3.5 days before Slystar to wait for him and everyone else in our pack to catch up. Off Brazil, if not sooner. So misterdjul hasn't done anything wrong. It's just the nature of this event.
Another way to feel sick in this event is to push your start time too late, miss the back of a system, and watch the fleet sail away. (Although Slystar did that, stayed patient, and was favored by the wind gods later).
Another way to feel really sick in this event is to give up on what looks like a bad run, re-start, and then see people you were ahead of do really well later.
But the worst way to feel sick in this event is to finish your run, feel good about it, and then watch 400 boats you've never heard of, weren't tracking, and didn't know about suddenly all finish with times a day faster than yours. And then you look at their tracks and see that some of them didn't appear to be trying particularly hard (long straight lines, periods of negative VMG, etc). And you realize... If you didn't pick the right start time, no amount of hard work is going to help you do well in this event. Then you swear you'll never do it again. Then you sign up again the next year anyway.