Europa Warmup 2012

UPDATED: 21/5/2012

After last year’s Transat B to B, the Transat AG2R La Mondiale Warmup race, and the still ongoing Transat AG2R La Mondiale, LiveSkipper will play host to yet another virtual race to be run in sync with a real-life event. The Europa Warmup is a yacht race for IMOCA 60 class boats and is intended as a final test ahead of the Vendée Globe solo around the world race which will start in November.

The Europa Warmup is a two-legged race from Barcelona to Cascaïs to La Rochelle with the first leg starting at 14:00 UTC on May 19th. The second leg is scheduled to start on May 26th.

LiveSkipper home

The Liveskipper website received a complete overhaul recently and now looks like this:

I think it rocks.

Transat AG2R La Mondiale

In 1992, Jacques Caraes and Michel Desjoyeaux, aboard their Figaro Beneteau Sill Plein Fruit, won the first ever Transat AG2R La Mondiale in just 24 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes, and 34 seconds. The race ran from Lorient, France, to the Carribean island of St. Barthelemy, with a mandatory waypoint near the Canary Islands. In the following editions the waypoint was moved from the Canaries to the Portuguese island of Madeira, while Concernau on the south coast of Brittany is port of departure since 2006. For this 20 year anniversary edition, the Canary Islands waypoint is back.

LS: Figaro Bénéteau II

UPDATED. The Figaro Bénéteau II, introduced on LiveSkipper ahead of the 20 year anniversary edition of the Transat AG2R La Mondiale, is a 33 foot boat with a carbon mast, twin rudders, and a wide stern for added stability. Built by Bénéteau, it is a Marc Lompard design for singlehanded, doublehanded, and fully crewed sailing. The Figaro Bénéteau is used in the Figaro Circuit of races, including Cap Istanbul, Transat BPE, Transat AG2R, Le Tour de Bretagne, Solitaire du Figaro as well as other events.

Transat AG2R La Mondiale warm-up race

In the year the Transat AG2R La Mondiale celebrates its 20 year anniversary, the race organisers have selected LiveSkipper to host the official virtual ocean race. The Transat AG2R is a race for Figaro Bénéteau 2 boats, and this boat has now been added to the LiveSkipper fleet. Before the start of the race on April 21st, there will be a change to give the boat a decent shakedown in the warm-up race which will start at 16:00 UTC on April 11th.
The Figaro Beneteau 2, shown in this blog’s header image, is used in several other well-known events, such as le Vendée Globe, la Solitaire du Figaro, la Transat Jacques Vabre, and la Route du Rhum.

Update: A GPX file for Bluewater Racing can now be downloaded from here.

FMV Five Seas Race

The Five Seas Race, starting at 14:00 UTC on March 25, is a 1500 nm yacht race from Monaco to Rostov. Not for the faint of heart, this race will have you pass three narrow passages, the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus and the Kerch-Yenikal Skiy Canal, that is, of course, if you manage to steer clear of the countless islands of the Greek archipelago.

Bluewater Racing v1.72 released

Bluewater Racing version 1.72 was released today. This version contains several bug fixes. Find out all about it here.

This version should also fix any problems you may have had connecting to brainaid’s NMEA proxy. Read Aaron’s post How to get your GPS data into Bluewater for details on how to connect.

Bluewater Racing v1.71 released

Updates are coming thick and fast now with the release of yet another version of Bluewater Racing, v1.71. Find out all about it here.

Tcl script for Bluewater Racing, by Aaron

Aaron Gage has written a very useful script for Bluewater Racing’s tcl console to help determine the optimum departure times for Timed races on Sailonline and Record Challenges on LiveSkipper.

Read all about it and download from here on Aaron’s SOL Tools.

Excellent stuff.

Bluewater Racing v1.70 released

Today yet another version of Bluewater Racing, v1.70, was released. The latest version features a newly written optimizer for faster route calculatiin. Find out all about it here.

Bluewater Racing v1.62 released

A new version of Bluewater Racing, v1.62, was released yesterday. Find out all about it here.

Transat B to B

In association with IMOCA and Transat B to B, LiveSkipper organizes the virtual Transat B to B, the Back to Brittany transatlantic crossing from St. Barthélémy to Lorient. Starting at 14:00 GMT on December 5th, it runs in sync with the real race, which is a prelude to the Vendée Globe.

Register for the race here.

Perth 2011 ISAF World Championship

As an overture to the 2011 ISAF World Sailing Championship starting on 3 December in Perth, Australia, LiveSkipper organizes an official virtual ocean race. There are 22 T-shirts to be won, but the grand prize is a round trip to Australia for the final week of the championship.

The virtual race begins today, at 14:00 hours UTC. The race will start in Weymouth, England, with the finish located in Perth. A gate is located south of South Africa, and there are three ice gates between Africa and Australia.

For this race a new boat will be used, a Foil MAX prototype. And I am happy to report it is quick and able to reach speeds never before seen on LiveSkipper. Just not windward.

Update: currently, a fleet of over 1730 boats is heading out onto the Atlantic. Look out.

LS: Ghost ship

[Updated] LiveSkipper’s Ghost ship, our vessel during the upcoming Ghost race, has just three sails: a sigh, a whisper and a howl. The polar graph shown here is a composite of the three.

Sailing the ghost ship should be fairly straightforward.

FMV Kiribati Race 2011

At 16:00 hours UTC on 7 November, the LiveSkipper fleet of Maxi-trimaran’s will set forward on a massive 16000 mile long race from Goteborg, Sweden, to the Gilbert Islands of the Kiribati Republic. There are several gates that must be passed along the way, the most notable of which is undoubtedly the final one at Australia.