Learning About Crossover Speed

Learning to sail is going to involve a number of challenges, and one of them involves a new rule in the PV09 Racing Rules of Sailing:

Part 4, 42.3 (h): Sailing instructions may, in stated circumstances, permit propulsion using an engine or any other method, provided the boat does not gain a significant advantage in the race.

Because the new four-race format has three scheduled stopovers before reaching Puerto Vallarta, it's important to avoid having stragglers who fail to reach one destination before the next leg starts---Feb. 4 from Turtle Bay, Feb. 7 from Magdalena Bay and Feb. 10 from Cabo Falso. And I'm totally down with getting to each destination on time, because I want to spend plenty of time enjoying the towns where we stop and getting in some skin diving with the whales in Mag bay and my new underwater camera!

The rule is set up so that competitors who motor their way pay a price steeper than it would cost them to sail. So the organizers developed a new "Cross-Over speed" formula that will be introduced in the race thanks to some clever DRYC members: David Feinstein, who suggested it; Allen Puckett, an aeronautical engineer who developed it (he once worked for Howard Hughes), and Peggy Redler, the race coordinator and former math teacher who implemented it into a computer code scoring system.

As Redler explained, "The Cross-Over speed is based on a boat's PHRF (handicap) rating and the speed of a virtual boat: 8 knots. The formula creates a unique speed for each boat that allows them to use their engine when their sailing speed drops below a certain point. It will not adversely affect their corrected time."

But here's the joker: The Performance Handicap Racing Fleet system is based on time and distance.

"This is not a power boat race," Redler emphasized, "because the faster you go under power and the more distance you make gets you a higher penalty . . . and because we subtract how far you power, you get less sailing distance and therefore less [PHRF] handicap time allowed.

"But it's to your advantage when the wind is very light to turn the engine on, [or] if it's blustery, for the sake of controlling your boat."

Once an engine is run and then turned off, the rules forbid re-starting it for another hour, preventing racers from picking their spots repeatedly in patchy conditions.

"This is more than just making your boat go faster," Redler said. "There are tactics and navigation involved. You need to know how to use GPS, charts, bearings. It's a multi-skill game. It's the only way you can have a multi-race event when you have to get the boats through one leg in time to start another."

Tom Redler, race committee chairman and husband of Peggy, said, "This is the only race I know of that went to the trouble of working out a formula that would make it possible to use the engine and not degrade the race."

One thing for sure: it all makes the navigators' lives more complicated---which is why two new awards will honor the spinnaker and non-spinnaker division navigators whose calculated finish times for the first three legs most closely match the times registered by the boats' on-board satellite transponder, which will operate on real time.

Except for the final finish off the beach at Puerto Vallarta, Peggy Redler noted, "There are no [finish] lines on the water. They have to find them [with instrumentation]."

The four individual races are marked by stopovers along the Baja California peninsula: 376 nautical miles from Marina del Rey to Cedros Island outside of Turtle Bay; starting Feb. 4, 220 n.m. to Magdalena Bay, famous for its friendly migrating whales; starting Feb. 7, 152 n.m. to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja peninsula, and the last, starting Feb. 10, 286 n.m. across the Gulf of California to Puerto Vallarta on the mainland, finishing off the beach in Banderas Bay in front of the race headquarters Westin Resort & Spa.