From original email 13 Dec 2019 17:48
A number of people have asked me how far the outer buoys are from the banks and so rather than answer individually I will send my answer to all.
It’s difficult to say what the clearance is now because since the “automatic” raising and lowering started to give problems they are often put out manually each meeting and so it’s variable.
Also, it isn’t put out with any measurement.
I suggest that you look on Google Maps https://www.google.com/maps/@54.0602202,-0.2521186,147m/data=!3m1!1e3 and use the “Measure Distance” feature. You will see that on the particular day that the satellite photo was taken, the outer buoys were about 13mts from the bank.
You will also notice that the circuit doesn’t have semicircle ends. It is more like a rectangle with bulgy ends.
It seems to me that the questions we need to ask ourselves are:-
• Is it desirable to have the circuit length the same as a Naviga circuit?
• Is it desirable that the ends of the circuit are semi-circular?
If the answer to both those questions is yes then you will see the results in the diagrams I sent to you. The further away the outer buoys are from the bank, the more that the straights are shortened. In fact, if the clearance from the bank were 13mts then the semicircle radius is 18mts and the straights would be only 27mts long and the circuit becomes closer to a circle.
From the responses I have had so far, it would appear that the younger ones with better eyesight want a smaller clearance with longer straights with the opposite also being true.
Regards
Martin Marriott