Racing Know how

The Bermuda Sun--  Imagine if children could learn to sail without even getting in the water.  Now they can thanks to the Bermuda Sailing Association (BSA) and the WaterWise Programme.  Five public middle schools across the island have started an on-land way for children to learn the basics of sailing.  The WaterWise Programme is a "learn to sail" programme that begins with dry-land sessions using Opti Simulators, which are essentially sailboats with wheels that mimic the actions of being in water. The simulators enable children to spend time learning the basics of water safety and sailing before they venture out onto the water.  Ben Nicholls, who is on the Guy Carpenter team and helped build the simulators, and said the on-land experience the students receive is not unlike the real thing.  "It is very similar," he said. "Apart from the fact that you don't have the waves splashing over you and the boat rocking back and forth. We picked middle schools that had a big, big playground. So they could charge around and not cause too much damage."  The Guy Carpenter team used both recycled material and new pieces of sailing equipment from the BSA and the Royal Hamilton

UK-Halsey's quizzes are based on common situations when sailboats come together on the race course. The questions are not about obscure, hard to repeat, situations; they present incidents that happen again and again on the race course. Since most of the quizzes have several related questions, the library of quizzes offers a lot of sail boat racing lessons.

What makes UK-Halsey's quizzes a unique way to learn the rules of sailing is the use of animation, which allows viewers to get a much better understanding of the rule in question. The animations can be stopped and started and played over as many times as necessary for the viewer to come to their own conclusion before checking the answer. Viewers watch the boats move; spinnakers go up and come down; sails luff and are trimmed as well as move from side to side as the boats go around the racing marks. Read More

The resistance experienced by a moving sailboat includes the effects of waves, eddies, and turbulence in the water, and of the vortices produced in air by the sails. To reduce resistance effectively by optimizing hulls, keels, and sails, one has to understand its various components. Read More