This race is ideal for the use of our Force 2 or, better yet, Force 3 software. You can set up courses which take into account all possible orders of the three rounding marks, as well as alternative routes between marks (such as between Blackaller and Red Rock, via Racoon Strait v. south of Angel Island). You can input your boat performance paramters, assume a wind direction and calculate total time around each alternative course in a few seconds.

These course solution comparisions can depend a great deal on your assumptions about the wind. For example, we took a "counterclockwise" route from the start around TI, around Red Rock, through Racoon Strait, thence around Blackaller to the finish. For a wind direction typical of the summer (240 degT), and assuming a boat whose top speed under a 12 knot wind was 7.5 knots on a reach, the calculation gave virtually no difference between this route and the reverse, "clockwise" route from the start, around Blackaller, through Racoon, around Red Rock, around TI and back to the finish (207.6 min v. 205.8 min). However, assuming instead a wind out of the NE (45 deg T), the comparison was 245.7 min (C) v. 198 min (CC), a difference of almost 48 minutes!

The program allows you to break the route down into segments and make different wind assumptions in each segment. If you can't take a PC along on your boat, the idea is to try to investigate as many scenarios as possible and take printouts along instead. But with a PC onboard, perhaps tracking boat position via a GPS, you can recalculate as needed as conditions change - or if the wind is quite light in the early hours and the race extends to the flood later in the day.