Sailing Simulator

This is used to teach sailing techniques and available to all students and members anytime they wish to use it.

Frank Bethwaite is the designer of the Tasar dinghy and the author of High Performance Sailing. He has been a major player in the development of the sailing simulator, working closely with Professor Norman Saunders.

Extract from Australian Sailing May 2005 by Frank Bethwaite:

“The sailing simulator is revealing fundamental differences in technique between the front and back of the fleet.

The sailing simulator is following the path of its flight simulator forebear. The flight simulator started by substituting for the aeroplane, but its usefulness unexpectedly grew to the point where it now routinely does much more than it is safe to do in any aeroplane.

The sailing simulator is following the same path. Substitution came first. It is self evident that the simulator keeps going despite calm, gale, darkness or snow outside, so early use was driven by substitution. But as we gained experience we quickly found that the sailing simulator can reveal, measure, compare and record and in these respects it can do more than any boat can do.

By far the most important difference between the simulator and a boat is the simulator’s ability to record a sailor’s technique and measure and compare his race time with his opponent’s technique and time or his time for previous races. This has never been possible in a boat because both wind and water are naturally unsteady and small differences can never be measured with certainty in unsteady conditions.”