Number and Type of Legs
The traditional Olympic triangle course consists of a lap (starting with a beat or work to windward from the starting line to the top, weather or windward mark, a first reaching leg to the wing mark (also known as the gybe mark), a second reaching leg from the wing mark to the bottom or leeward mark), a hot dog (a beat to the top mark with a square run back to the bottom mark), another lap and then a beat to the finish line, which may have one end at the top mark, or may be set beyond the top mark. When the finish line is set beyond the top mark, the sailing instructions need to specify whether the top mark remains a mark of the course on the final leg or whether it is to be ignored. There are generally 9 legs, 5 equal to the length of the windward leg (4 beats and a run) and 4 reaching legs (2 of each reaching leg), so once the leg lengths are known the total course length can be calculated. Roundings are generally to Port. Many sailing instructions only specify the length of the windward leg and the total course length, but see below on the use of the law of sines, trigonometry table and spreadsheets to calculate the angles and other leg lengths.
Read more about this topic: Olympic Triangle
Famous quotes containing the words number and, number, type and/or legs:
“A child’s self-image is more like a scrapbook than a single snapshot. As the child matures, the number and variety of images in that scrapbook may be far more important than any individual picture pasted inside it.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“My tendency to nervousness in my younger days, in view of the fact of a number of near relatives on both my father’s and mother’s side of the house having become insane, gave some serious uneasiness. I made up my mind to overcome it.... In the cross-examination of witnesses before a crowded court-house ... I soon found I could control myself even in the worst of testing cases. Finally, in battle.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“People forget that it is the eye that makes the horizon, and the rounding mind’s eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)