
Post by
BooBill | 2020-11-02 | 00:35:47
Yes and no.
Their claim to be using real boat polars is complete bullshit. They explicitly claimed that the Atlantic Crossing Record polars were from the actual record holder Comanche. However, their polar only went up to 20knts of wind speed and 26 knots of boat speed. The polars used almost exactly matched the published polars for Scallywag, another 100' maxi, who's VPP polars are available because she races ORC. However, a real maxi keeps on accelerating above 20knts. In the Sydney-Hobart you can see them on the tracker hitting 35 in bursts and averaging over 30.
Back to the Imocas. Despite claims by some of the skippers (Alex Thompson doing 33knts in 18knts true), those are instantaneous speeds only. Only they know what those boats will do as an average hour after hour in real offshore conditions. Those are the real numbers that matter for VR. Unfortunately, until they start racing under IRC/ORC those numbers will be closely guarded.
In the Vendee Arctique, the virtual boats fell somewhere in between the latest generation foilers and the best of the non-foilers. Since Imoca sanctions the virtual race, they probably are happy with that. No one wants to see a virtual boat first over the line.