PUMA Ocean Racing on leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. Image copyright Rick Deppe/PUMA Ocean Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.
by Mark Chisnell
Torben Grael and Ericsson 4 have consolidated their grip on the lead, as PUMA hit the handbrake and made a 30-degree turn yesterday afternoon. So - spooked out of the west? Or have the long-term temptations of the east proved too much to resist for Ken Read and his team? But if so, maybe not for long... they are aiming at an elusive target in the Doldrums...
At 10:00 ZULU everyone was still on port tack, headed more or less east-southeast in a north-easterly wind direction (TWD in the Data Centre), with the wind speed (TWS) back up around the mid- to high-teens. Ericsson 4 and PUMA were neck-and-neck in the race south, 35 miles apart, east-to-west. Ericsson 3 was a 100 miles due north of the lead pair, with Green Dragon and Telefonica Blue another 100 miles north of her – and clearly dead-set on the east.
The yachts just have to touch somewhere on each of the virtual ‘lines’ formed by the gates. The boats don’t have to cross the lines, just touch them, and they can approach from the north or the south – although obviously the assumption is that they will be coming up from the south...
All right, back to yesterday morning at 10:00 ZULU – when we left the leading pair of Ericsson 4 and PUMA, they had both made a slow course change towards the south. They were steering around 150 degrees – almost straight at New Zealand – and appeared to have decided that they had gone far enough east and found their lane through the Doldrums and into the south-east trade winds. But we can see on the Race Viewer how Ken Read and PUMA flip-flopped on that decision, with a course change just before the 19:00 Position Report last night.
PUMA Ocean racing heading east at sunrise on leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. Image copyright Rick Deppe/PUMA Ocean Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.
At that point the separation between PUMA (to the west) and Ericsson 4 (to the east) had grown to about 35 miles. And neither Green Dragon nor Ericsson 3 had followed the leader’s course change to the south, crossing their wakes to head further east earlier in the afternoon. But given that PUMA’s change of heart came before the Position Report, it probably wasn’t the leverage that suddenly concerned Read and his navigator, Andrew Cape.
And if it wasn’t the fleet’s position, then it must have been the weather. I’ve pulled up a graph of True Wind Speed (TWS) – and you can see the drop for PUMA and Ericsson 4 from 10:00 to 19:00 ZULU yesterday, but the boat’s behind weren’t suffering from it. And I think this is why PUMA decided to get out of the west in a hurry. It certainly worked, look at how the wind speed jumped again after the course change.
Aboard Ericsson 4, Grael and his navigator, Jules Salter agreed with PUMA’s analysis, although they reacted more slowly and more smoothly. The net effect was that the leverage closed back down to 25 miles, and – because PUMA were sailing away from the waypoint - Ericsson 4 was regaining all the miles she had lost on the Distance to Leader. At least until the last couple of hours, when PUMA started to drift south again, and started gaining miles again...
Ericsson 3 and Telefonica Blue are holding their own
Stacking onboard Telefonica Blue, on leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. Image copyright Gabriele Olivo/Telefonica Blue/Volvo Ocean Race.
Before the course change yesterday afternoon the leaders were steering more south than the three chasing boats – closer to their next waypoint at the scoring gate, which is bearing 158 degrees. So they were gaining miles purely because they were sailing at the target.
That all changed once PUMA and Ericsson 4 started sailing the same course as the others, and although Green Dragon have still been struggling (which is about boat speed), Ericsson 3 and Telefonica Blue have been more than holding their own since yesterday afternoon.
Which leaves us with the big question – how far east do they need to go? This picture is starting to become clearer. But one thing is for sure, they all want to go east pretty badly. They are sailing wind angles of 80-90 degrees – and they go around one to two knots slower at a wind angle of 80 degrees, compared to 100 degrees. So there has to be a good reason for taking that penalty in boat speed, rather than sailing a touch more south and a lot faster.
The answer is not to be found in today’s first Predicted Route image - where I’ve pushed the boat positions out to five days ahead (although the weather shown is only four days ahead, a little idiosyncrasy of the system). And this shows that the boats could turn towards the south now and aim for the eastern edge of the Solomon Islands – where they will start to hit some flaky breeze (Doldrums, Part 3) in five days time. Looking at the breeze over the next few hours isn’t much help either, the NOAA forecast models still think that there should be more wind to the west – but it doesn’t look like that’s the case.
That leaves us with today’s bonus Predicted Route image, which has the weather and boat positions in 24 hours time. But have a look at what’s a couple of days ahead of the fleet (on the three day isochrone) at that point – it’s pretty ugly. In theory, that area of light air is going to blow out of the way by the time they get there – but they may not want to drive at something on the assumption that it’ll get out of the way...
(Oh yeah, it’s Groundhog Day all right, but I’d been saving that one for three days time when they’re still reaching south on port gybe... thanks for nothing SiFi...)
Anyway, maybe that’s the reason everyone is still headed east, but I don’t reckon they’ll hold out for much longer. I think that by this time tomorrow we’ll find everyone pointing south-east with the hammer down, and eventually going through the Doldrums down the eastern side of the Solomon Islands, but that's just my view...
Volvo Ocean Race
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