Predicted Log Contest

What is a Predicted Log Contest?

It is a contest where each skipper attempts to most accurately predict the time it will take him to navigate a specified course in their boat.

 That's it - in short! You only have to know how fast your boat is running in different conditions, calculate the time you predict it takes you for a given course and the person who is closest to the time predicted by him or her is the winner of the contest.

The time to run the course depends on the speed you have chosen to run your boat. You can run your boat at any speed you desire and the speed selected does not affect the outcome of the contest! There is no time limit other than to finish by mid-afternoon. The use of watches, clocks,  speedometers or GPS's is not permitted during the contest run.  Only the tachometer of the engine may be used. 

Let us first correct a very common misunderstanding: 

YOU ARE NOT COMPETING AGAINST OTHER PARTICIPANTS, BUT AGAINST YOURSELF!

A member of either the Catawba Power Squadron or the Charlotte Power Squadron, alternating each year,  lays out a course using a standard chart for Lake Wylie. We usually stay South of the Buster Boyd Bridge since it is very difficult to calculate the time it will take you to slow down in the no-wake-zone at the bridge. That is why our course is normally only 10 to 15 miles long, whereas other PLC's are usually 25 miles long.

On the day of the contest, each participant is given a copy of the chart and a written description of the course. For a sample of the course selected in the Predicted Log Contest on October 6, 2001:

The competitor will then calculate how long it will take him/her in  seconds to run each leg of the course. This data is turned in to the contest committee before running the course. 

During the contest run, a committee timer will ride with you and will record the actual time taken for each leg. (Therefore, when you are running test to see how fast your boat is going at a certain RPM, make sure you also have another person onboard.)

At the end of the run, the timer will turn in your times to the committee, which then compares your actual run time with your estimated run time for each individual leg of the contest.  The  difference in seconds  between the two run times (actual and estimated) for each leg will be added up, and then the total error for all legs in seconds will be divided by your estimated time in seconds, resulting in a percentage error.

So you might have a perfect total time and still loose since your individual leg times are far off. 

The participant with the lowest percentage difference is the winner,
and in the annual contest between Catawba and Charlotte Power Squadrons, the totals of the three best results of each squadron will be averaged to determine the winner.

The critical part of the contest is to know the following about your boat:

1) How fast your boat goes at the engine RPM chosen by you on the day of the contest. (So you should make test runs at different wind conditions since you don't know the conditions prevailing on the day of the contest)

2) How many seconds it takes your boat to turn around a 90 or 180 degree turn

3) What effect wind and waves will have on your boat in any direction

If you calculate exactly how long it will take you to run the course, your percentage error would be 0.0%. First, second and third place winners usually have a score of 5% or less.