II—The 1957 Transatlantic Race

Abstract

If you want to ride up a hill on a bicycle you zig-zag up it, because although you travel a longer distance you go much faster and get to the top quicker. There is some similarity between what the cyclist does and what you are trying to achieve when you are planning for a long ocean race. Your object is to find the fastest way from the start to the finish, and whether this is also the shortest way depends on a number of imponderables such as the weather you can expect, the ocean currents, and so on. On a long race, generally the shortest way is not the quickest. What you are interested in is time, and like the cyclist, in distance only so far as it affects time. What you have got to do is to use all the elements that make you go fast, and these include not only winds and currents, but also factors such as the sailing qualities of your boat in different conditions. In addition of course you have to consider how you will stand relative to the others, not only if what you expect happens, but also if it doesn't. In other words your strategy will be tempered by some estimate of the reliability of the predictions of wind directions and currents you are working on. Your overall plan, then, is likely to be partly geographical, which is concerned with finding the least-time route; and partly strategic, which is concerned with not getting caught out.