Saturday, January 29, 2011

One World in bad weather

The One World 2011 round four was hit by bad weather. Really bad. Not only did we have numerous restarts caused by system failures, we also saw myriads of in race crashes moving the boats up and down the fleet in random. On top of that, some racers where ghosted, and we also saw boatscripts somehow being unable to run, leaving the boat barely afloat. That type of race should really be cancelled, and it is made possible by rule 32.1.
Waiting for the last boat; My team with Liv in green.

Objections! The conditions are always the same for every team. That may be true, but if the rule of good luck breaks down, the event is no longer a race. It is a lottery, and it is time to call it off. Wasting time like that is no fun, and it clearly hasn't got anything to do with racing. In RL we never crash like that. However, we do have gear breakdowns, and we may have conditions so bad, that fair racing is not possible. Then the race is cancelled.
Finally! After hours of extra time; All finished.

There is no point, no fun, no honour in winning a race sailed under unfair conditions. Not in RL, not in SL.  Anyway, I know Liv protested the race for being unfair. The RC dismissed the protest as being invalid. So Liv filed for an appeal. That's gonna be interesting. Especially since there was no hearing, establishing facts. Besides that, it is probably the first appeal in SL sailing, ever. The issue is quite a killer: Is the sailing in SL to be taken serious? For details on the race, see MetaverseSailing. I will post details of the appeal here.

Oh, about the rule of good luck: Most racers reach a point when they ask themselves "Why does that dude always go faster". The answer is ofcourse, that good racers simply have more luck. Realising that luck comes with training is an important step to take for any serious racer.

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