Rare bird - A Beneteau First 260 resource

When we decided to go with ORCA for BlueJ, the Display 2 was the obvious choice for a permanent mast-mounted solution. But like most things in sailing, the path to getting there involved some learning and a few course corrections. The Budget Tablet Experiment Before dropping the cash on the Display 2, I wanted to validate the whole concept of a mast-mounted tablet. So I picked up a 700-NIT waterproof Android tablet from Amazon for about a quarter of the price of the Display 2. The specs looked reasonable, it was IP68 rated, and worst case, we'd have a backup device. It actually worked pretty well – the ORCA app ran fine, and the waterproofing held up. But two issues emerged pretty quickly. First, 700 NIT rating was bogus, it was closer to 400. and it just wasn't bright enough for direct sunlight conditions. You could see it, but you had to shade it with your hand or squint. For racing, where you need to glance at mast mounted instruments quickly, that's a problem. Second...

In my recent post about our ORCA setup , I promised a proper technical deep-dive into how this system actually works. Well, buckle up  (and this is coming sooner than I thought) – we're going down the rabbit hole of sailing physics, sensor fusion, and why getting accurate wind data is both harder and more important than most sailors realize. The "True Wind" Problem Here's the thing that tripped me up early in my career at Magellan GPS: calculating true wind sounds simple, right? You've got a wind sensor on your mast, you've got boat speed and heading – just do some vector math and you're done. Well, no. It's that 'devil in the details' thing. It turns out the wind sensor on your mast top is basically not telling you the truth. Not on purpose, but it's being influenced by so many physical phenomena that the "measured wind" it's reporting bears only a passing resemblance to the actual wind your sails are experiencing. And wh...

  Here’s a relative rarity for us, we actually managed to get team photos at the WYC banquet! A fun end to a challenging season. As our 2025 trophy frame states, this was ‘ the summer where we weathered storms and adjusted our sails ’ Due to medical issues and family things, we only ended up racing in about half the number of our typical WYC races. This made it almost impossible to do well in any series event, because in each major series we had races that we had to score as DNC (Did Not Come). In actual numbers, we showed up for 25, but due to light airs this summer only 12 of those races were sailed and scored! The other half were abandoned due to lack of wind. At WYC we will normally race if there is 5 knots of wind over the course, so you can tell how light it was this year. But it’s a show of our determination and capability that we won both of the single day regattas, the distance race Burton cup, and the windward/leeward Frostbite cup. And we ended up 3rd in the bitterly con...

As we do every year, here is a section of some of the better pictures we got of BlueJ; some we took, some from friends, some from strangers! Crossing with Cyclone BlueJ as art, by our PRO Chris Upwind in the Commodore Cup Jodi being Jodi! Code 0 reaching in the Commodore Cup Finishing! Rounding the windward mark Windward prep Coming in after an M-series abandonment due to ZERO wind. BlueJ on the hook GoPro view of a light air spinnaker reach. Kisses are for WINNERS '

I try at least once a year to present a detailed BlueJ race analysis, backed up with either pure analytics data and/or video. For 2025, I going to review of performance in the WYC Frostbite Cup with 360 video. Date October 25 2025 Race WYC Frostbite Cup Weather 50F,  cloudy / clear mix Wind 9-14 knots SSE   (130T)    FLEET - WYC PHRF 1 Spinnaker Crew: 4 Driver/tach, Main, Pit/Jib, Foredeck/Spin Video Tech: DJI OSMO 360 with DJI BT/GPS remote, DJI 'invisible' selfie stick Instrumentation Tech: Raymarine ST60+ Wind, Depth, Water Speed, ORCA Core sailing processor, ORCA Display 2 Mast Instrument, Sailmon MAX Start timer and lift/knock, Actisense NMEA2k/WiFi Gateway PRESTART: Wind pre-start looked even up the course, with no real line bias, We planned to go for a solid mid-line start, focusing on having room below. Competition wise, we have a J80 that can present problems, and a Santana 23TR and US-21 that are like rated and well sailed. And Impulse 26 that is much faste...

As many know, I'm a bit of an instrumentation geek when it comes to sailboat racing. This is particularly relevant on BlueJ, which is a bit of a unicorn racing in a USA PHRF handicap fleet. Without like-boats nearby to judge real-time performance, we end up relying on presented numbers based on boat performance to stay on pace. And this has led us to this: Our brand new, all-singing, all-dancing ORCA Core system, fully integrated into our existing NMEA-2000 network. And while not perfect, it has fundamentally changed how we sail and race BlueJ. But first some backstory. After years working at Magellan GPS where my team designed some of the first stand-alone marine plotters, I've alway focused on having detailed sailing data on the boat. For racing, this started with a TackTick Racemaster compass, which actually used a mechanical fluxgate compass! Next came the Velocitek ProStart, a Prism, a RaceGeek, a Sailmon MAX and then a stint at Vakaros where I ran global sales and marketi...