As an armchair sailor you may dream of ripping up 100 dollar notes as fast as you can, under a cold shower, deprived from sleep, doing an ice-bucket challenge every 5 minutes. For the real life thing, please sign up with folks like Bekking, Cauldrier, Boris Herman or Rosalin Kuiper
For the next best thing we offer you to participate in this years edition of The Europe Race series, in the sailing simulator SailAway. Racing a virtual IMOCA 60 in some 40 – 800 NM oceangoing races. During the season there will be some 90+ races all around Europe. Particpate in a minimum of 7 races to try and qualify for finals in late spring.
We invite sailors to join us in places like Odessa (UKR), or in Klaipeda (LIT) for a series of races going from European Seaport to European Seaport.
The races will be conducted in 2 boat handling modes, each having their own race: Full Auto in races shorter than 100 miles allows you to turn on all automatic trim features SailAway has to offer, you just drive the boat.
In races longer than 100 miles you just plot a course and can rest assured that your boat will continue with more efficiency in your absence, your boat can finish first even if you are away from your computer (you know… jobs, family, etc). That is…, if you have plotted a winning set of waypoints that will lead you to the finish. Sailing off -ine will be rewarded with a hefty speed bonus. of 17.5 % compared to the regular offline speed.
In races under 100 nautical miles, your are expected to be online the whole race. this can easily be up to 12 hours. Sailing off line in these races is ment only for emergencies. Sailing off line in races shorther than 100 nautical miles will be punished.
Full Manual is the mode for hard core armchair sailors that leave nothing to chance, all trimming is done manually. You prepare yourself or your team to run the simulator online 24/7 during races, cat napping on tight schedules as solo sailor or waking up your teams next crewmember to hand over the helm at the end of your watch. If keeping that boat under control with a code 0, J2 as staysail and a full main up, thundering down the waves hours on end is your thing, then this race is for you. As a safety precaution your boat will continue at 88.5 % efficiency so to not lose contact right away in case of network glitches.
For entertaining the spectators there may be non scoring short coastal races the day of the start or the races. These races are open to all SailAway e-sailors, also the ones that don’t participate in The Europe Race.
With windshifts variating from +10 to – 10 degrees from the true wind direction, on line boats can get up to a 20° advantage compared to off-line boats. Off-line boats do not experience wind shifts, lulls and puffs. Neither can an off-line boats surf down waves. All in all for a fair playing field all race participants should be online or all should be off line.
- Off-line mode is discouraged in races intended for manual and actively trimmed boats the whole race long.
- A bonus is given to off-line boats in auto trim races longer than 100 miles intended to be sailed off-line.
- Off-line mode however is discouraged in auto trim races shorter than 100 miles, races intended to be sailed on-line.
- By organizing many races from 20 NM – 600 NM, there are enough races that can fit every e-sailor’s schedule.
- By utilizing a rating weighed for experience ( time spend on the water) and reliability ( repetitive results) skill of individual e-sailors can be compared without ever sailing against eachother
In the end a rating of your e-sailing skill is determined. Your rating does not depend on the time you spent on the water, except for a minimum nr of 7 races.
Weather you sail manuala or with automatic trim is up to you but rating and scoring will be separated for each of these modes. Entering a race with the wrong mode can seriously harm your rating in that mode. (when your rating is not very reliable yet) as DNF, DNS etc are scored with a finish time proportional longer than the finish time of the last boat finishing
For upcoming races check the Sail Away homepage: sailaway.world