Where are we in the Rankings?
Arnamentia
Jon & Carol Dutton
Fri 9 Dec 2011 23:35
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Now here's a thing. Having arrived about an
hour and a quarter before Cochise on Tuesday night we still reckoned we'd lost
to her. We didn't know how much she had motored but, somehow,
assumed that is was less that we. We all submitted our end of race
declaration forms and we discovered that she had apparently motored for more
than two hours longer than we. So, given that we'd crossed the
finishing line an hour and a quarter before them, we'd beaten them by a country
mile.
That didn't feel right. So we checked our
deck log very carefully and recalculated our engine hours. We'd bogged
it. The result is that we'd motored for 58 minutes more than they
did. Obviously, we 'fessed up to the ARC office and amended our
declaration.
Verrrry interesting! It's now in the
lap of the gods. You will recall that the penalty for using the engine is
that the time under engine is multiplied by some factor between 1 and 2 and
added to the elapsed time. The precise value of the factor is
determined by the ARC organisers based on some arcane formula related to
the conditions experienced by the fleet. God knows how it works.
Actually, he might be a bit hazy Himself.
Anyway, the upshot is that if the factor applied is
1 we reckon we should beat Cochise by around 15 minutes. If the factor
applied is 2 we think we'll lose by around 45 minutes. At some value
betwixt and between we'll end up dead level.
But, that's life and we'll await the final
result. That two more or less identical boats with amateur crews, both
determined to beat the other, can cross an ocean and 16+ days later be
interested in a difference in the time each took of a few minutes
here or there seems to me to be remarkable. Moreover, if we have to
concede 2nd place in class to anyone, we can think of no better people to whom
to concede it than the very sporting crew of Cochise who made the crossing
such hard work - and such
fun.
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