Newport - Bermuda Race -
This race puts a premium on routing - knowing the winds and currents, particularly the Gulf Stream. Our "Atlantic Packages" include powerful new routing software and wind and current digital models of unprecedented accuracy and resolution.
The 2000 race was the inauguration of our digital Gulf Stream prediction model, enabling a new level of tactical/routing computations, and the first three boats to finish were all "Local Knowledge" clients. Aboard Sayonara with Mark Rudiger, Ed Adams reported:
| Great job on the Bermuda Race currents this year. Our current set/drift numbers seemed to match your predictions for the entire 600 miles. Keep up the good work! |
"Best Course" Routing Solution (in red), with alternative courses for comparison. Marks shown as 3, 11 and 18 are the 8:00 am positions of Sayonara on Sat, Sun and Monday, respectively. The blue vectors are Gulf Stream currents used in the routing computation, along with a wind forecast from Commander's Weather and Sayonara polars. Note how the red course bends east of the rhumbline in the middle of the route to take advantage of the favorable current. |
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Our special "Bermuda Package" included the following elements:
| Currents at Newport: our regional current model predicts current at every point on the chart, and at every time and day of the year, and integrates these predictions into a suite of navigational and tactical functions, including "best course" routing which takes current, wind and boat polars into account. The example below shows flood currents from Newport to Block Island Sound. |
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| Chartmaker
Facility: Any electronic image can be converted into a chart for navigation and tactical planning. This chart taken from a web image shows water temperature and prediction of cold (CE) and warm (WE) eddies along the rhumbline from the boat to Bermuda. This enables you to visualize your position and your proposed route in context with wind, current and weather conditions. |
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| High Resolution Digital Model: We draw on Jenifer Clark and other sources to build a detailed, hydrodynamically sound, digital current model of the Gulf Stream and the northern approach to Bermuda. The result is illustrated below, with current prediction vectors (in blue) calculated by our software overlaying the Navy's Northern Gulf Stream prediction chart. You can clearly see how the vectors follow the strong eastern path of the Stream, and circle in the eddies, but the special advantage of our model is that it makes this all quantitative, and supports detailed tactical and routing computations which weigh all effects at once: wind, current and boat characteristics. |
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| Next time you do the Bermuda Race, take "Local Knowledge" aboard ... |
For Details about our Tactical Software - Click Here
For Details about our Atlantic Race Packages - Click Here
| Check us out for short and long races in LI Sound, Block Island, the Chesapeake, etc. We have detailed current models for all these venues, and can supply wind prediction files as well for any race in the region. |
