Reprinted with permission from www.breymaiersailing.com. For more coverage of the Barcelona World Race, click here. -Ed.

With sailing fans all around the world following the Barcelona World Race tracker and, with the BWR website, becoming armchair meteorologists, it's easy for those of us competing in the race to forget how lucky we are to be sailing these machines. We're especially lucky to experience the whole range of conditions onboard during a round-the-world race.

One thing that's not easily conveyed is what it's actually like to sail one of these machines. Some questions we get are:

1. How fast do you actually go? 
2. What's the best angle to the wind to get the fastest boatspeed?
3. What sails do you use in what conditions? 
4. What conditions qualify as “easy," “a bit uncomfortable,” and “really rough”?

The short answer to all four questions is: It depends a lot on the wind and waves. Of course, that's not a very satisfactory response, so I'll try to expand a little.

How fast do we go? We have what are called “polars” for the boat. This is a data set created first by the naval architect, then refined with data gathered on board during optimum sailing conditions. The polars predict how fast the boat will sail for a given wind strength or angle. We have the data for every degree and every knot of windspeed. You'll see a simplified table below.

Click image for larger version.