Hi all

Just imagine that you had four yacht clubs that were some distance apart and you were trying to organise a race to a single finish line

Now traditionally you would have a single start line and the boats from each club would have to meet there to start the race so that they would all sail the same course

Now this is the totally stupid idea

If you had each club start at their own location and you set all four courses so that they were approx 22nm in a straight line with the courses converging at a point at about 7nm from the common finish line at Cygnet and started all of the boats at the same time obviously for the first 15nm of the race the boats that were running would have the shortest distance to sail and the boats that were beating would have to sail the longest distance

Could you then do calculation based on distance sailed divided by time taken to give you a average speed and then apply a handicap to this figure to work out a overall winner of the four race courses

I guess the problem is that as well as different wind directions for each course the wind strength would also be variable as well

The photos below show what could be the the four courses so let me know what you think

Regards Don