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

Gday everyone,

With the Formula racing now finished for the season its time to shift up a few gears back to GPS/Slalom racing.

The committee are keeping an eye on next weekends forecast (14th/15th Feb) as a potential window to run the 3rd Freerace event. Location will be EITHER Botany or Lake Macquarie depending on where the best forecast is.

So this is just a heads up to try to keep next weekend clear, and fingers crossed the nor-easters come back for us.

Next update will be mid-week.

Cheers
James

Gday everyone,

Heat 3 of the NSW GPS Freerace series is scheduled for either Saturday or Sunday this coming weekend (6th or 7th December), on Botany Bay.

We would prefer to run on Saturday, but the forecast is still pretty variable so we will make the call on Thursday evening. Launch spot will depend on wind direction.

Look forward to catching up with everyone. Will post more details closer to the weekend.

G'day everyone,

Tomorrow sees the first NSW GPS Freerace day for the summer. Forecast is for a 15-20 kt seabreeze, filling in throughout the afternoon. A classic Kyeemagh day.

Even if you don't have a GPS or don't want to enter the competition, come along for a fun sail (no cost unless you want to race) and help make this a massive day of fun and socialising.

For those who are keen to be part of the freerace competition, the plan is to meet at the top carpark around lunchtime for registration (look for the YELLOW STORMRIDERS trailer) and rigging up, then hopefully run at least two 30 minute freerace sessions during the afternoon. The actual start time will depend on the wind.

Each session will commence with a "le-mans" beach start with everyone standing with their gear on the waters edge, before the start flag is raised. Then its a scramble as everyone sails away and tries to go as fast as they can for the 30 minutes. A big flag will be on the shore to show when the session is "active" - when the 30 minutes is over the flag will be taken down, so everyone will know the session is finished.

Please leave your GPS turned on and running all afternoon - the special KA72 freerace software will take care of splitting up sessions etc.

At the end of the day, I will copy the files off your GPS memory card then process them once I get home.

The course area is shown below. Please stay upwind of the line between the end of the runway and the "South Ramp". You can still do speed runs down the runway if you want to, but for safety we have restricted the area past the runway. Please don't sail to Kurnell during the race as it won't count. This boundary has been set up on the KA72 Freerace software so if you go outside this area, you will get a zero speed until you sail back into the course area.





Remember its just $20 to be part of the competition. All the money raised goes to cover the costs of the event (boat fuel, maritime permits etc) and any leftovers gets invested back into the clubs that make up WindsurfingNSW. Looking forward to a great day!

Thanks again to Dylan from KA72 for the assistance and provision of the Freerace Master software.

Cheers
James