Arve Roaas trimming on board Ericsson 3. Image copyright Gustav Morin/Ericsson 3/Volvo Ocean Race.
by Mark Chisnell
Just in case you haven’t noticed there’s an island in the way. It’s all about Fiji, and Fiji isn’t going anywhere - to the left, right or middle? Offside and legside looks hard enough, but the middle is about as easy as going through the gate.
The Green Dragon can lick its lips - they have the clearest road to the east. Telefonica Blue looks stuck with going west, or weaving through the islands. But the leading trio of Ericsson 4, PUMA and Ericsson 3 have just been barreling straight at the target, driven onwards by the easterly breeze. A shift in direction – any shift in direction - would have helped, as the mileage clicked down towards the point of no return.
At 04:25 ZULU on 27th February, with just over 100 miles to go, Ken Read and PUMA could wait no longer – they eased the sails and turned west. The 07:00 Position Report came and went, and no one aboard Ericsson 4 or 3 blinked. Then, a couple of hours later, just before the 10:00 Position Report, a little sniff of a wind shift arrived. It moved towards the north – and let the Ericsson boats turn east. And so, at 10:00 ZULU this morning, we are set for the mother of all splits. It’s not been easy to get the top three apart, but Fiji has done it.
It’s been 24 hours that started so calmly. After the torrid transition of the second Doldrums, everyone had settled into some fantastic sailing. Ericsson 4’s Phil Jameson reported that they were feeling a bit more comfortable on Ericsson 4, now that everyone had decided to head east of Fiji and the tactical options were constrained.
I’m not sure that Jameson will have the same sense of equanimity about life this morning. But at the time, those aboard Ericsson 4 were clearly relieved that everyone had decided to go for Fiji, rather than take the alternative route option due south, (towards the tip of New Zealand). Everyone now appears to have left the decision too late to get east of Fiji without an expensive tack.
Yesterday afternoon, Jameson reported that they were in a full upwind mode, sailing as close to the wind as they could in an effort to get round the east side of Fiji. Everyone else has been doing the same thing. Until PUMA headed west, the whole fleet was sailing at the same tight wind angles, and on virtually parallel tracks.
Telefonica Blue seem to have maintained a slightly higher boat speed average than anyone else – the slowest appearing to be Ericsson 4. The teams are responsible for calibrating their instruments, and there are no guarantees that they are absolutely accurate.
The Distance to Leader graph tells a similar story though. Ignoring the jumps yesterday morning, that’s just the change in the calculation to account for the more easterly route everyone has taken. From then until PUMA headed west, Telefonica Blue made steady gains on an otherwise even fleet. Nor do they appear to have had any advantage in wind speed. If anything, Telefonica Blue have had less breeze, while Green Dragon has been helped along by a little more – and the Dragon has kept pace pretty nicely this past 24 hours. As we’re suspected before, Telefonica Blue has a slight edge going upwind.
All this means that what I’ve been telling you about faster speeds at wider wind angles turned out to be a red herring. In the end, despite the fleet sailing as close to the wind as they could go for the last 24 hours, it looks like anyone who wants to go east of Vanua Levu will still have to tack to starboard, as Ian Walker mentioned. Any time spent on starboard will be painful, going miles in the wrong direction (long-term) to get around some coral and rock. But will it be more painful than going west of Fiji?
The answer depends a lot on where you are positioned. Clearly, for Green Dragon, it’s much easier to go east than for Telefonica Blue – which may yet have a crack at going through the islands. The toughest decision was for those in the middle, Ericsson 3 and 4 and PUMA, and if they are not already past the point of no return, they can see it from there. If you’re going to sail out of your way to go around Fiji, you’ve got to do it at the fastest possible wind angle.
The fastest angle of sail in 12 knots will vary a little bit from one boat to another, depending on their sail inventory, but it looks to be somewhere around 100 degrees. And that’s pretty much the angle that PUMA’s skipper, Ken Read and navigator, Andrew Cape, chose when they turned west – as they sail towards the western corner of Fiji.
How is this going to play out? Slowly – when Green Dragon took the eastern route after Japan, it took more than a week for her to get back this close to the fleet. The separation that Fiji is going to open will be even greater, and it could easily take as long to play out. So, a high entertainment factor for the neutrals, but heart-in-the-mouth stuff for the die-hard supporters.
Unfortunately, until the fleet get out to one side or the other of Fiji, the Predicted Route is not much help to us. But the west of Fiji looks pretty dire in the short-term, forcing them to sail downwind in light air. And that is very slow. It should be quicker sailing the upwind and reaching angles to the east, but only if they don’t have to tack too much. And a lot will depend on what we can’t see from this distance, like the local land effects on the breeze.
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