Bowman Martin Krite takes a reef in on the mainsail on Ericsson 3 en route to Rio De Janeiro on Leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. Image copyright Gustav Morin/Ericsson 3/Volvo Ocean Race.
by Mark Chisnell
The end of the long and winding road to the Doldrums is in sight. But the light at the end of the tunnel is going to be a train coming the other way for some of these crews, as the fleet scatters across the Pacific. Measured from the south-west to the north-east, the spread from PUMA to Green Dragon is now over 200 miles – that’s a whole lot of leverage, and not everyone will have got it right.
At 10:00 ZULU the fleet was blasting south-east, well and truly into the north-east trade winds. The wind speed was back up to 20 knots, and the wave height was up to six metres. Back to life at the extreme – as reported by Simon Fisher (I’m not holding a grudge against him stealing my Groundhog Day Link). And with everyone sailing on the same south-easterly course (within ten degrees) it looks like the skippers and navigators have all picked their lane for the re-entry into the Doldrums.
At the front of the fleet, Ericsson 4 and PUMA are inseparable on the leaderboard, still just a handful of miles apart on the Distance to Leader (DTL) measure. But they are drifting apart on the water – now separated by over 40 miles west-to-east. Behind them, Ericsson 3 has taken a good 50 miles out of the leaders on the DTL. This has been at the expense of her windward position. She’s sailed a wider, faster wind angle into the wake of her sistership. Ericsson 3 is now just over 60 miles directly behind her. Not bad for a boat that started seven hours late.
Meanwhile, to the north, we have another milestone in Telefonica Blue’s comeback – they passed Ian Walker and the Green Dragon on the 01:00 ZULU Position Report earlier this morning. After hitting a rock just before the start in Qingdao, forcing them to haul the boat out for repair and start 19 hours late, Bouwe Bekking and his team are just about back in the game.
I say ‘just about’ because these two boats are a 100 miles apart east to west. The earlier, unconfirmed sighting of Wouter the Router, alive and well and navigating aboard Green Dragon, is now a positive ID. I might have been premature in announcing the Dragon’s move east a couple of days ago, but there’s no doubt about it now – they are set up for a Doldrums passage significantly to the east of the rest of the fleet.
Skipper, Ian Walker, confirms their thinking in his latest email, telling us how they’ve been helped along by a wind direction that has made getting east cheap. Unfortunately, we can’t confirm that, as the Green Dragon’s instruments still aren’t reporting back to Race Office. Although the breeze has certainly veered (rotated clockwise) for the leaders, they are sailing a much tighter wind angle today than yesterday, in order to hold their south-easterly course.
Walker also suggested that their strategy is motivated to some degree by their boat speed deficiency, which he blames on a lighter keel weight, and less righting moment. Righting moment is fundamental to boat speed when you are sailing on a reach or upwind.
Bowman Martin Krite reefs the mainsail on Ericsson 3 during leg 5 from Qingdao to Rio De Janeiro. Image copyright Gustav Morin/Ericsson 3/Volvo Ocean Race.
So place your bets – is this a calculated risk or wild gamble?
Should I start by pointing out that the Dragon was the star performer in the Atlantic Doldrums crossing? While over on the west wing of the fleet, PUMA are zip for two against the Doldrums, as skipper Ken Read reminded us a couple of days ago. No, I probably shouldn’t.
In his latest email, Bouwe Bekking points again at the reason this Doldrums crossing is so much tougher than on Leg 1. There is no prior racing history to give them a point to aim at in the Doldrums, in contrast to the well worn route through 27-31 degrees W in the Atlantic. Nevertheless, Bekking and his navigator, Tom Addis, (doubtless aided by their met consultant, Roger ‘Clouds’ Badham’) have used the historical data to pick a point to aim for – but they aren’t sharing that piece of information.
Jules Salter was riffing on the same theme in another great audio interview with Guy Swindells yesterday. Salter’s point was that the weather they need to carry them past New Zealand and into the Southern Ocean, ‘hasn’t even been formed.’ Or as he put it when I talked to him in Qingdao, they are making decisions before the ‘butterfly even flaps its wings’.
This is the second horn of the dilemma. The weather forecasts don’t go far enough ahead in time to tell them where to aim at in the Doldrums. I’ve set up today’s Predicted Route image with the boat positions in five days time, along with the weather for four days time. And you can see that this only takes them to the Solomon Islands, at about 10 degrees S. The breeze has softened and veered (rotated clockwise) into an easterly direction. But they’re still not in the Doldrums proper, never mind the south-east trades.
Conclusion?
There’s no real way of judging how the Dragon’s eastern play is going to work out at this stage. My view is that if Walker and his team had the boat speed of the leaders they would be taking a wild gamble, but because they’re struggling for speed, I think they’ve taken a calculated risk.
Volvo Ocean Race
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