Gabriele Olivo/Telefonica Blue/Volvo Ocean Race
We have 24 hours of tricky sailing, pumping change into the cloud slot machines before the fleet stumble bleary eyed towards the exit signs
Monday 24 November 2008 10:00 GMT
TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 2, DAY 10
By Mark Chisnell
Pointing straight at a narrowing, shifting gap in the Doldrums, the fleet are hammering northwards, once again falling into line behind Torben Grael and Ericsson 4. The overall leaders have powered back to the front overnight, as another challenger fell away.
The wheel’s came off Telefonica Blue’s blitz up the charts when they snapped a daggerboard. Skipper Bouwe Bekking sent this quick report, and later on, navigator Simon Fisher discussed it with Amanda Blackley on audio.
Clearing the damage cost Bekking and his boys 10 miles by the 13:00 ZULU Position Report, and now they have to struggle northwards without the extra resistance to (technical content warning!) leeway.
It’s the walking wounded chasing Team Ericsson – all three of the closest yachts have damage – Green Dragon has no boom; PUMA has structural issues and now Telefonica Blue has only one daggerboard. How this plays out will depend on the conditions we see between here and Cochin – suffice to say that if the fleet have to go upwind in any breeze, no one is going to be getting any closer to the Ericsson boats.
But at 10:00 ZULU this morning, the fleet were power reaching on starboard tack in the trade winds. The breeze has ramped up in the last 24 hours, and is now blowing out of the east-southeast at a solid 20 knots of True Wind Speed (TWS in the Data Centre).
There’s been some lane changing, most notable is Ericsson 4, who have sailed a significantly wider True Wind Angle (TWA in the Data Centre) since about midnight and powered down to the west (to leeward) to join their sistership, closing out the leverage and popping out in front.
A missing daggerboard trumps a broken boom
Behind them, PUMA have also sailed a wider, faster True Wind Angle in the last 24 hours, swopping lanes with Green Dragon to take up a position to the west, and pulling clear ahead into third. Without their daggerboard, Telefonica Blue have slipped to the west, to leeward, and despite losing another 10 miles or so since it happened, have held onto fourth in front of Green Dragon – I guess a missing daggerboard trumps a broken boom for heavy air reaching.
Telefonica Black has done a great job of hanging onto the leaders as the squeeze box has unwound – the boats in front got the stronger wind first. Fernando Echavarri and his team have gone for speed, sailing the lower, faster TWA and ending up the western-most boat. In contrast, both Team Russia and Delta Lloyd have elected to tough it out and hold their line to the east of the fleet, and they’ve seen their deficit to the leaders unravel to almost 200 miles in the last 24 hours.
Now they are all pointed more or less at the finish, the easiest way to track all this is with a graph of Distance to Leader (DTL). I’ve pulled up True Wind Angle (TWA) to go with it today, and the wider angles sailed by PUMA (red line) and Ericsson 4 (orange line) are clear. So is the impact of the missing daggerboard on Telefonica Blue (blue line) – they’ve got one of the narrowest True Wind Angles in the fleet, and yet have slipped inexorably to the west, to leeward, which you can see on the Race Viewer.
After 24 hours of straight-forward sailing, there’s another 24 hours to go – plenty of time for philosophical contemplation for the crew then. But not for the navigators and skippers, they’ve got the upcoming Doldrums to worry about.
The sweet spot is to the east
Team Russia’s navigator, Wouter Verbraak reported this morning that they were making a very determined break to the east, to try and go round the worst of the Doldrums, rather than squeeze through a narrow gap. So, someone is going to take it on, to boldly go … and all that. No great surprise that it’s a back marker – Telefonica Blue’s navigator, Simon Fisher expressed in that earlier audio interview what I suspect is a widespread desire amongst the leading bunch to keep it tight. Having said that, two of the top five boats can’t go upwind properly, and a third needs to avoid slamming in waves – so you never know.
Looking at the Predicted Routes (the north-south lines) we can see that the sweet spot through the Doldrums is further to the east, the further back you are in the fleet – only the two leading Ericsson boats aren’t being advised to make the detour.
And even for them, the crossing point has moved from 75degE to 76degE in the last 24 hours. The calculations in the Prediction Data table in the Data Centre, and on the Predicted Tab in the Leaderboard show some pretty gasp-inducing gaps between Team Ericsson and everyone else in five days time (+5DPDTL in the Data Centre) as a consequence.
There’s a cautionary note to the Doldrums
But there’s a cautionary note to be made about Doldrums and weather forecasts, which I can sum up in two words – Delta Lloyd. During the approach to the Doldrums in Leg 1, Delta Lloyd held to the east, and navigator Matt Gregory went to some trouble to explain how they were going to roll around an incoming convection cell and make some good gains.
Instead, Delta Lloyd got completely nailed, trapped in light air with skipper Ger O’Rourke complaining afterwards that, ‘Not one GRIB [weather forecast] file I have seen was accurate for the Doldrums.’ Meanwhile, the old bulls, Ian Moore on Green Dragon, Andrew Cape on PUMA, Jules Salter on Ericsson 4 and Roger Nilson on Telefonica Black, followed the adage (west is best) and headed that way with the hammer down. The Dragon went furthest and strolled through into the lead.
As we mentioned in the Leg 2 Preview, the trouble now is that there is no adage to fall back on for this leg – no one’s raced through here since the Tea Clippers (and they were going the other way, further east).
On the upside, the other difference is that they can reach any of a number of Doldrums crossing points by just sailing a slightly different True Wind Angle and changing trim or sails to do it. The angle might be slightly slower as Verbraak tells us, but at least it doesn’t involve gybing off at right angles to the course, as it did in Leg 1.
What we do know for sure is that the wind will start to ease tomorrow morning for the leaders, dropping under ten knots by the afternoon, and under five knots overnight into the 26th. From there we have 24 hours of tricky sailing, pumping change into the cloud slot machines (wish you were here?), before the fleet stumble bleary eyed towards the exit signs, as the wind picks up from the west.
The TEN ZULU REPORT (so called because it follows the 10:00 GMT fleet position report, and Zulu is the meteorologist's name for GMT).