Advanced Search provides additional search options providing the ability to narrow your search by combining multiple search variables.
Note that by default, the Date Range set to 2017 will return all results from a text search. You can select both Date Range settings to narrow the returned results.
Author : F. Tagliaferri
Results 1 - 3 of 3
Development of a Routing Software for Inshore Match Race
Yacht races are won by good sailors racing fast boats. A
good skipper takes decisions at key moments of the race
based on the anticipated wind behaviour and on his position
on the racing area and with respect to the competitors.
His aim is generally to complete the race before all
his opponents, or, when this is not possible, to perform better
than some of them. In the past two decades some methods
have been proposed to compute optimal strategies for
a yacht race. Those strategies are aimed at minimizing the
expected time needed to complete the race and are based on
the assumption that the faster a yacht, the higher the number
of races that it will win (and opponents that it will defeat).
In a match race, however, only two yachts are competing.
A skipper’s aim is therefore to complete the race before his
opponent rather than completing the race in the shortest possible
time. This means that being on average faster may not
necessarily mean winning the majority of races. This paper
presents the development of software to compute a sailing
strategy for a match race that can defeat an opponent who is
following a fixed strategy that minimises the expected time
of completion of the race. The proposed method includes
two novel aspects in the strategy computation...
When the future wind direction is uncertain, the tactical decisions of a yacht skipper involve a stochastic routing problem. The objective of this problem is to maximise the probability of reaching the next mark ahead of all the other competitors. This paper describes some numerical experiments that explore the effect of the skipper׳s risk attitude on their policy when match racing another boat. The tidal current at any location is assumed to be negligible, while the wind direction is modelled by a Markov chain. Boat performance in different wind conditions is defined by the output of a velocity prediction program, and we assume a known speed loss for tacking and gybing. We compare strategies that minimise the average time to sail the leg with those that seek to maximise the probability of winning, and show that by adopting different attitudes to risk when leading or trailing the competitor, a skipper can improve their chances of winning.
When the future wind direction is uncertain, the tactical decisions of a yacht skipper involve a stochastic routing problem. The objective of this problem is to maximise the probability of reaching the next mark ahead of all the other competitors. This paper describes a system that models this problem. The tidal current at any location is assumed to be predictable, while the wind forecast is based on current observations. Boat performance in different wind conditions is defined by the output of a velocity prediction program, and we assume a known speed loss for tacking and gybing. The resulting computer program can be used during a yacht race to choose the optimum course, or it can be used for design purposes to simulate yacht races between different design candidates. As an example of application, we compare strategies that minimise the average time to sail the leg, as opposed to those that maximise the probability of winning, and show how optimal routing strategies are different for leading and trailing boats.
