Charleston Race Week

If you will be competing in Charleston Race Week 2001, you will need a good knowledge of local currents to be competitive. During the period 4/26 - 4/29 the ebb will exceed 3 knots in Charleston Harbor, and the flood will approach 2 knots. This can dramatically affect the position of laylines, course selection and overall strategy. The graphic below shows currents in the Harbor at 14:24 hours on the afternoon of 4/26, shortly before max ebb. The solid blue lines are the laylines at a mark (yellow box) in the absence of current, assuming a wind of 10 knots at 270 deg T and J105 polars. Due to the strong and variable current, the actual laylines are shown by the magenta dots (if you sail at the optimal tacking angle and make the target speed, you will sail this corrected, curved, course to the mark). The large variation in current over small distances can significantly favor one route to the mark over another.

This graphic and layline computations are based on the new "Charleston Region" edition of the PC program "Force 2" we first developed and refined for San Francisco Bay several years ago. Force 2 has become a standard tool for most of the top Bay racers, and at venues such as Block Island and Annapolis. The program computes currents at any day and time, and at every point on the chart (the current points shown in yellow are added at the user's option; you can add as many as you like, anywhere you like, to provide more detail in the racing venue). This is the only program which can do this. Our standard "Force Two" program is just $175.00 and the advanced tactical "Force Three" program is $1,500. With Force Two you get all the current prediction and display features, boat simulation functions, layline calculations and our utility to quickly build and solve courses for current-corrected headings, times, etc.; plus you can hook live to a GPS. Force Three adds a long list of tactical computations, including "best course" routing, plus it reads and interprets all boat instrument data and boat polars.

NEW !! If you will be using Deckman for Windows (DFW) on Racevision, or another onboard computer, we have a DLL to support DFW which will enable it to read our current predictions and thereby perform realistic computations. The DLL is $500, including Charleston data. Once you have it, you can purchase current coverage for other venues.

For details on our programs, check the information on this website; to order, go to ORDER FORM. Or call us at 415-332-8507.

NOTE: You can now purchase an effective, sunlight-readable PC repeater screen for the cockpit at a reasonable price. Ask about our "Tactical Racing Package" with OceanPC.

AND, if you are sailing elsewhere, check out our editions for San Francisco Bay, Long Island Sound, Block Island Sound, Narragansett Bay, the Chesapeake, Puget Sound, Tampa Bay, Auckland, the San Juan's, English Chanel, etc. We are rapidly expanding our inventory of current models, so check this site for the latest.