Some hints for Newcommers to RG

[blzblz]

Not sure whether the pilot boat is explained or not in the manual.

There is a short descritption of it in the french forum: "Manuel d'utillisation" / "Procédure de départ et bateau pilote" , first thread:

Le bateau pilote, démarre derrière un bateau choisi, et le suit à 2 ités, il contient tous les bateaux
inscrits qui n'ont pas pris le départ.
On reconnait le bateau pilote à ses contours noirs plus marqués.
Donc si vous prenez la course en cours, vous partirez de là.

that can be translated into:

The pilot boat is a virtual boat.
The pilot boat starts behind a special boat,andt follows her 2 iterations behing. All the boats that have subscribed to the race, but have not yet staret (setting a sail and a hadong) are in the pilot boat (welcome btw).
You can detect the pilot boat with its contour line (border line ?) that is a bit darker black than the other boats and the boat bit greener.
Then, if you start a race that has already started, you'll jump out from her.


On the Clipper race, the name you can see on the pilot boat is "durejournée", although there is a special character instead the "é" (...).
"durejournée" is the most recent boat that applied to the game and to this race.

The pilot boat follows a boat based on her ranking. At the beginning of a race, the folloowed boat is about half of the total ranking. But as the race goes on, the pilot boat will little by little drift to follow a boat from the back of the ranking.
As the ranking can change a lot at the beginning of a race, the pilot boat position can change a lot at every iteration.
Location becomes more "stable" as the race goes on.

The pilot boat and the demo boat are not related.

The demo boat is drawed in orange on the map. The demo boat allows anybody to test the game without registering with a login / pass (with the "Essayer avec le bateau demo" on the home page ("Try with the demo boat", I just checked and there is a not found page when clicking the english flag on the home page, will be fixed soon, sorry).

[Coromandel]

Got it!!

[Paradise]

I was looking for some hints to find my VMG during a race.

thanks, limelight for your tables, helpful and detailed enough. .
however, now I discover in the polar diagram , two numbers that are placed a little outside the outer circle that has the headings 0,30,60 etc.
in my particular case it shows 42 for wind strenght 16 and TWA 45 for and also 150
could this be the VMG upwind 42 degree, and VMG downwind 150 degree ???

[limelight]

I was looking for some hints to find my VMG during a race.

thanks, limelight for your tables, helpful and detailed enough. .
however, now I discover in the polar diagram , two numbers that are placed a little outside the outer circle that has the headings 0,30,60 etc.
in my particular case it shows 42 for wind strenght 16 and TWA 45 for and also 150
could this be the VMG upwind 42 degree, and VMG downwind 150 degree ???

They are the VMG angles, they appear in red in the table below the diagram. But...
1) they don't tell you what the VMG speed is, and
2) they don't tell you what the VMC is for your course. VMG is good if you're going very close to the wind axis but if your course is a long way off, maximising the VMC may be better (or not, I remember a few races on VR where I gained like crazy using the maximum VMC course, only to end up in a patch with no wind 12 hours later).

Anyway all the calculations are done for you in the calculator.

You may also need the great circle calculator to know the direction of the target because they don't have an orthodromique ruler as LS had. You were spoilt on LS

https://madinstro.net/sundry/navigation/gcircle.html

[blzblz]

bla, now I discover in the polar diagram , two numbers that are placed a little outside the outer circle that has the headings 0,30,60 etc.
in my particular case it shows 42 for wind strenght 16 and TWA 45 for and also 150
could this be the VMG upwind 42 degree, and VMG downwind 150 degree ???

Yes
vmg is dispalyed on the interface (2 lines / angles on the polars diagram (up and downwind), red font on the tab).
it's up to you if you want it at its best...
might play a little with bits of tenth of degree with waipoints ?
check how long you can cope with this !)

fair winds

[limelight]

The clipper polars are a little bit tricky at times, here is an example:
Wind 25 kts, direction 200. and I want to go from A to B within a space where the wind remains constant in speed and direction (my example overlaps 2 cells because I carelessly made the distance from A to B 100 nm).

First I wanted to get the VMG headings beating, so I made heading same as the wind direction (200)


This corresponds to a TWA of 41 degrees (headings 159 and 241 are 41 degrees either side of 200)

Since I wish to sail 145 which is outside the range 159 - 241, I would normally go there directly on a close reach which would let me move at 10.4 knots with a TWA of 55



However, when I check my "trax" tab, I find I can get from A to B quicker by sailing two legs, both on the same tack (starboard) one at a 143 heading, 71.42nm long, the other at a 150 heading, 28.64 nm long, both legs using the same sail (solent), the overall time is 9h33m29s. Sailing direct at 145 heading would take 9h36m55s.


Interesting and unusual I think

[limelight]

Another "feature" that I have noticed, I won't classify it as a bug. And for those of us coming from LS it should be an automatic thing to do:

If you've set some schedule points beyond the change of weather forecast, knowing that the new weather becomes available about 90 minutes before the change (when the wind icon becomes green), then clicking on the refresh button does not update the scheduler points, they stay on the same TWA as before. You need to reload the game altogether before you see the new TWAs. Or maybe switch to a different race or challenge, then come back (I haven't tried that). Think of it as restarting LS to update the wind info

[wineblood]

Hi,
You can also clic+ for a new shedule, and the twa will change.

[limelight]

Thanks Fred, I'll try that.

[limelight]

Some interesting bug was posted on the French forum so I'll describe it here:

Someone asked the scheduler for a heading of 362 ( it may have been a typo rather than a deliberate entry) but 362 is what was entered.

The display accepted the entry as a heading of 2. However the game engine on the server rejects any heading greater than 359, so the boat did not follow the programmed trajectory.

I thought you all wanted to know that!

John