Gday everyone,
This coming weekend is the first round of the NSW GPS Freerace Series for 2015-2016. This series is presented by WindsurfingNSW and organised by a team from Marmong Point Sailing Club. The series is generously sponsored by The Windsurfing Shed, Boab Boat Hire and Wicked Promotional Products.
More details below:
Here is a Q&A about the first event, and the series in general.
Where is it happening?
- Kyeemagh, Botany Bay from the new Northern-most carpark
When?
- Saturday 17th October (with Sunday as a backup if forecast looks bad - final call made on Thursday night)
- Registration 11am-Noon
- Briefing 12noon
- Sailing period 12:30pm onwards (wind dependent)
How Much?
- Single day entry is $30 or
- Sign up for the 4 round 2015-2016 series (Sydney, Sanctuary Point, Forster, Lake Macquarie) for $100, save $20 and get a FREE SERIES T-SHIRT.
- Pay in cash at rego, or do an electronic deposit to: Marmong Point Sailing Club, BSB 062827, Acct 00901519 - Please put your name in the Reference field so we know who has paid
- Thanks to those people who have already paid, we'll have a list of names at rego.
Who can compete?
- Anybody is welcome, regardless of your gear! These events are about getting people on the water having a great time sailing together.
- While we would love everyone to join up to their local club, membership is not required for this event
What kind of GPS can be used?
- GT11, GT31, GW52, Android GPSLogit which export an SBN file
- Canmore, Garmin watches etc which can export a FIT file
- Garmin Foretrex, other watches which export a GPX file
- If your device requires a cable/cradle to download the files, please bring it along so I can get your data. Or you can email me the file when you get home.
What's a GPS freerace event? How is it scored?
- Basically, everyone goes sailing, then at the end of the day hand me your GPS and we will crunch the numbers in the software to find out everyones results.
- This year we will have two divisions, Freerace and Handicap
- Freerace is determined by who can sail the furthest distance (ie highest average speed) during a defined 30 minute session (eg 2:30-3pm). Conditions permitting we will run two or more of these 30 minute sessions. This is the same format as last season.
- Handicap takes into account all of your sailing during the calendar day, and compares it against your GPSTC top 5 results for 2sec, 5x10, Alpha and NM. The person closest to their top 5 average is the winner. This is a new format for this season.
The Handicap sounds interesting - can you explain more about it?
- The Handicap division was based on feedback during the off season that people wanted to bring the inclusiveness of the GPSTC into the NSW Series
- The winner is the person closest to their GPSTC Personal Bests (PBs)
- Matt Dowse had the initial idea, and Mark from GPSTC provided the technical know how to automatically get everyones GPSTC top 5 from the website
- As an example, my (fairly unimpressive) Top 5s are:
- 2sec: 34.62, 34.05, 33.25, 31.86, 31.77
- 5x10: 32.43, 31.63, 30.77, 29.42, 29.291
- Alpha: 21.57, 21.17, 21.16, 20.91, 20.89
- Nm: 27.68, 26.1, 25.42, 24.83, 24.11
- So my handicap is the sum of all these numbers, divided by 5 (average of top 5) = 110.586
- During the event, if I had the following results
- 2sec: 28.5
- 5x10: 25.2
- Alpha: 18.5
- NM: 22.6
- Then total/"day score" would be the sum of these four results = 94.8
- My net score is my "handicap" (110.586) minus my "day score" (94.8) = 15.786
- I will tally up everyone's results for the day and the person with the lowest NET score will be the winner. Their score could actually be negative if they break PBs.
The Handicap sounds confusing, I'm not sure I understand?
- The good news is that it doesn't matter!
- All you need to do is
- Turn GPS on at briefing
- Go sailing at any period during the day (including the freerace periods) - be sure to focus on getting a good result for 2sec, 5x10, Alpha and NM
- Turn GPS off when you de-rig, and hand it to me
- I'll copy the GPS tracks onto my laptop and the software will take care of the hard work!
What kind of support have the sponsors provided?
- The Windsurfing Shed contributing towards costs of the t-shirts and supplying prizes for winners
- Boab Boat Hire providing us with discounts on boat hire for the Sanctuary Point GPS and Slalom State Championships event
- Wicked Promotional Products providing the series t-shirts at heavily discounted prices
- Also, Adam Craven from Stormriders has handmade some excellent trophies for the series winners
Looking forward to seeing lots of people at Kyeemagh next weekend.
Cheers
James, Byron and Murray
Hey James, if the forecast stays southerly is there a possibility of reconvening south of the bay and running the event out of GRSC or off Dolls point perhaps? Always good wind and flatter water down that end of the bay in that wind direction.
Hi Adam,
We're keeping a close eye on the forecast, and on Thursday night will post on this thread to confirm the location and day (either Sat or Sunday).
Cheers
James
James,
Have I paid for the series? I think I did it with my Marmong membership but not certain.
Thanks
Select to expand quoteBRUCE H said..
James,
Have I paid for the series? I think I did it with my Marmong membership but not certain.
Thanks
Will check for you Bruce.
James I would just like to shout out a big "THANKS" for your efforts that you are going to. Whilst I won't be able to make it up to Sydney for this weekend's event, I'm really looking forward to some friendly competition next month in Sanctuary Point. I can't see myself doing overly well but regardless it will be an awesome experience no doubt. Cheers mate!
No worries Tony, appreciate the encouragement - glad you're getting keen for an event, its going to be a great summer. It's not just me doing stuff, the other guys have been doing a stack of work behind the scenes, especially Byron has been flat out organising stuff for the Slalom States and GPS event at Sanctuary Point. Can't wait to get down there again myself. Just need wind now! Fingers crossed.
GREEN LIGHT FOR SATURDAY!
We been poring over the forecasts all week, and at the moment looks like we will get a moderate NE seabreeze at Kyeemagh in the afternoon. So we are going to lock in Saturday afternoon.
Remember:
- Registration 11am-Noon - Briefing 12noon
- Please make sure your GPS is charged and has a memory card!
- Please bring your lifejacket if you have one. We'll have a few spares on the day.
- It will make it easier for us if you can pay electronically for the event or series beforehand - see BSB/Acct etc in the first post.
See you Saturday!
James has pretty much covered every thing in detail cheers mate.
Saturday it is, bring on sunshine and wind.
Note that if you pay for the series $100 you get a free shirt valued at $25. Total saving of $45 from paying $30 for each event.
We will be selling shirts for cost price as well.
As James has stated none of this would have been possible with out Remi from The Windsurfing Shed paying for the shirts. The many other sponsors like Andrew from wicked promotions. Also of cause Marmong Point Sailing Club James and Murray. Thanks fellas.
Please thank all these people when you see them for the generosity and also consider them if purchasing equipment.
Thanks Byron Mcilveen
Looking forward to tomorrow, thanks in advance to those for putting on the day. 
I am going to bring Patrik Slalom 128 
and Patrik Formula V2 
. Sail sizes 12m to 7.9m 
given the forecast.
I had a good time with my formula board racing with the Long Board guys at Soldiers Point a couple of weekends ago. Hopefully some long board guys come to this GPS event as well. I would be interested to see the speeds they get in the light wind. They are pretty fast!! Also Lechner, wallys You would be surprised how fast a wally is 
I reckon GPS is a great way to get the whole windsurfing community together with the least amount of organisation in terms of laying marks and start lines etc. For people who haven't try competing in windsurfing before this would have to be the easiest and friendliest way to get started in racing. It is great fun and I find competition improves my sailing immensely which makes the sport safer and more enjoyable for me. 
regards Justin
It would be also cool to get the kids on BIC Techno sailing around for half a hour but not enough gear or GPS units at this stage. 
Looking forward to it....Would be great if the kids got involved. Either with BICs or whatever... I know my boy is keen....
See you tomorrow...
Here are the handicaps for tomorrow, with data taken from the GPSTC site. They are grouped by team, then sorted from lowest to highest.
The winner is the sailor who has the *sum* of their 2sec, 5x10, Alpha and NM scores for the day closest to their handicap.
See you there!
Blowing 15 to 20 at airport now from south just hope it hangs around should be good see you there
It was great to see everyone today. But unfortunately the wind wasn't consistent enough for us to run racing.
So the event has been rescheduled to NEXT SATURDAY 24TH OCTOBER.
Plan is the same as this weekend. Will post up again on Thursday to confirm based on forecast.
Hi John, yes the best way to guarantee no wind is to organise an event! Fingers crossed for next saturday. Thanks for signing up for the series, look forward to having you part of the events.
Just to clarify there are two *separate* divisions being scored:
- Freerace - which is the person who sails furthest (ie highest average speed) in the defined 30 minute periods
- Handicap - add up 2sec, 5x10, alpha and NM from across the WHOLE day.
So yes you could go out and sail 5 minutes and win the handicap, or you could sail all day. The freerace division scoring is still based on the defined half hour.
I agree that there are always going to be some challenges in setting a Handicap to level the playing field, and people with high PBs from investing in trips to speed sailing locations are maybe at a disadvantage compared to those who just sail their local choppy spot.
Ideally we could refine the handicap by having data for everybody for each location and condition (eg what is your PB for sailing at Kyeemagh in a gusty noreaster) but unfortunately that's not easily available.
To be fair to Matt D, he originally included the 1 hr in the handicap score but we decided to leave it out for this season.
I see what you're saying about applying a handicap based on peoples 1hr scores, but that would be tricky as well. I'm not sure people's 1 hr PBs are a good indication of their abilities, because most people never try for one.
Cheers
James
