If there is one thing 2020 has highlighted more than ever, it is how precious our time on the water really is. As competitive sailors, we have had less time to get race-ready, yet our expectations to get those top results does not waver.
Imagine you have just collected your new boat, and are about to have your first race, with the forecast at a punchy 20 knots. You have not had the time to set the boat up and you are not certain as to where the limits are. 50nm should certainly help you find out.
This was the very scenario for Ellie Driver who took delivery of her new Sunfast 3300 ‘Chilli Pepper’, four days prior to Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Race the Wight. With little time to prepare, fortunately for Driver and her crew they had opted to have a smarttune, the latest in wireless load sensor technology, fitted.
“Insanely easy to use and understand would be my opening comment,” comments Driver. “Having only picked the boat up four days prior to the regatta we relied on our smarttune forestay sensor 100%. Tacking up the green every 2-3 minutes meant we found the forestay loads invaluable and set our backstays at our predetermined default setting, allowing the crew to drive the boat faster. I must say gybing around the back of the Island [Isle of Wight] in 20knts on a new boat and being confident on our max/min rig tension was a fundamental factor in our success.’’
Ellie Driver and the crew onboard Chilli Pepper had an impressive first outing, they won IRC 3 and came sixth overall in a fleet of 133 yachts.
smarttune is a sleek, low windage load sensor that can replace standard turnscrews to wirelessly feed live rig loads to a smartphone or boat’s instruments. Customers with a smarttune installed are using the data to set their rigs up to known fast settings that will repeatedly give them a leading edge over their competitors.
Time and time again results are showing that data helps you win, is it time you installed smarttune?
