Not quite so easy, Glenn. I race as navigator and pit on a Jenneau
Selection 37 that is now one of the top boats in Massachusetts. It
took us five years racing three or four days a week to get the boat
dialed in -- maybe we're just dumb, but our present record suggests
otherwise. So if you want to invite us down for a year or two -- your
expense, of course ;-)

As far as recording polars goes, the package I've sent to two of the
posters here, following up on my earlier offer in this thread, will
automatically log all you need for polars with very little
modification. You would need to be comfortable with Visual Basic.

You don't really need polars, however, as all you have to do is sail
for the best VMG on your GPS. This suggests that you have someone
aboard who knows how to pull the strings just right.

Many cruisers could benefit from a season or two of racing on a
serious boat -- I certainly did. Since boats in the 30-40' range
carry crews of 8-10 people, there is often an opening for one or two
novices who may be nothing but movable ballst for almost the whole
race. Try your local yacht club.

Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com

Glenn Ashmore wrote in message news:YSdgb.46915$sp2.44462@lakeread04...
While you guys are working on programs, I want to see one that produces
polars from actual data. Say you would set the sea state and then when
you get the boat really cooking you hit a button and it records the wind
data and boat speed. Then it would sort it all out and plot polars for
each sea state.

Another option would be to just constantly record the data and then use
peak boat speeds maintained for more than say 30 seconds to select the
points to plot.

It would be really interesting to invite a hotshot crew of racing
sailors to sail a boat and produce a set of polars then do the same with
your regular crew and try to match the results. It would be a great way
to refine sail trim and helm techniques.

Willem Amels wrote:

Hello,

We have a tool under development which graphs wind speed and direction and
much more. You can set the time span from 1 minute until 16 hours and the
program offers many options for filtering and averaging the data.

If you combine it with a screen capture facility and automatic FTP it may
do the job for you.

You can download a 30 day trial version
at:
http://www.nauticis.com/download/supernova.rar


Willem Amels