The inaugural running of the Passages Contest took place in USS-SL waters on Saturday when six Tradewind brigantine captains sailed from Santa Cruz sim across some 40 sims seeking the accolade of being the captain of the first crew to win Passages. The honors went to Oliphant Ming who sailed single handed and completed the passage in 49.53 minutes (thats decimal minutes, not 49 minutes and 53 seconds).

Unlike a traditional sailboat race where the course is well defined and all skippers follow it, Passages allows skippers to chose their own course. In Passages captains can opt to head to the east initially (rounding East Rock in Mare Nostrum as their first “mark”) or they can opt for a western run (rounding West Rock in Empress Augusta Bay as their first “mark”). Five of the six captains on Saturday opted for the eastern option which, in the end, turned out to be the best choice.

The easterners included Oliphant Ming (49.53 minutes), Bea Woodget (54.66 minutes), Jane Fossett (56.35 minutes), EJ Courtois (66.75 minutes) and Liv Leigh (withdrew). It should be mentioned that EJ was in the chase in a group with Bea and Jane when he crashed. It took him several minutes to get back into the race which of course affected his elapsed time.

The sole westerner was Bato Brendal (58.28 minutes). While Bato was not hampered by the traffic that affected the easterners, his time showed that the western option was not the best choice on opening day.  The beauty of Passages is that it designed to be tweaked to balance out such options. Our plan is to modify the course from time to time in order to find a balance that works. Next week’s contest will find changes (to be announced 48 hours before the Contest, ie. by 9AM Thursday) that will be an attempt to balance the choices. This tweaking will likely be done every week, as, once we find a balance, we plan to tweak the course each week based on the direction taken by the prior weeks winner. If an easterner wins the day, then the western option will be modified favorably the following week.

Speaking of traffic, on the first run to East Rock a number of easterners got entangled in a mini-Trafalger of entertwined crossarms and cruching hulls. Liv Leigh’s brigatine had to be bailed for several minutes to be secured. Following the drama Liv and her crew decided to make the event a party instead of a race. They could be found sailing all over the southern USS-SL confusing the race commentator. Grin.  

One thing that is different between Passages and most other sailboat racing in SL is the addition of crew. Tradewind brigantines allow up to four crew members to sail with the captain. These crewmembers CAN actually help crew the boat in terms of controlling sails if the captain so chooses. However most captains just take crew along for the fun of it (although having even a non-sail-controlling crewman can be a great asset for situatonal awareness). Some of the boats had crews on Saturday, some did not. We encourage our six captains to post comments to this article recognizing their crew.

We want to acknowledge the good work of Jane Fossett and Oliphant Ming in assisting with the design of the course. They will be co-race directors, along with myself, for future Passages events. I would also like to express my gratitude to Cynthia Centaur and Yuu Nakamichi who did  yeoman’s work in helping solve problems that existed in the Passages startline. And last, but certainly not least, I want to thank, as we all should, Nber Medici who upgraded the Channel Islands sims from Class 4 to Class 5 just for Passages (albeit our Governor residents in those sims also benefited from the action). Photo credits: Images 1 and 2: Aislin Keynes; Image 3: Transparent Banshee.   –   Article by MTW