Environment Canada north Atlantic ice data for 12th May 2009. Image copyright Volvo Ocean Race.
by Riath Al-Samarrai
Chris Bedford looks at a map of the north Atlantic, one slide in a show detailing the leg seven trip to Galway. The mood in the Ericsson pavilion is light and informal, but his summary is quite stark. "This leg is fraught with danger," he says.
Jules Salter, the Ericsson 4 navigator, is reclining into his chair, so relaxed in his general manner that you half expect him to start snoring. "It'll be challenging," he adds. "Pretty rude awakening after a nice, cushy stopover."
He sits back in his chair and seems to not have a care in the world. That's just his way. But the preceding half-hour briefing issued by Salter and Bedford, the team's meteorologist, explained why no one will stake their house on the identity of the race's overall winner, even if Ericsson 4 do look comfortable with a 12.5-point lead.
"You will remember the last edition of the race, we lost a boat and worst yet a man on this leg," adds Bedford.
He continues through his slides, making the case that there are all manner of potential obstacles waiting in the 2,550-nautical mile track separating America from Ireland.
"This region here," Bedford says, "shows the ice populations. This is very good information, it is updated every single day." He points to a map (see image at right) of the Atlantic waters off Newfoundland, a Canadian province just six degrees north of Boston. Highlighted within is a zone, more than 300,000 square miles in area, that shows where ice has been cited in the water. In a particular one-degree box of longitude and latitude there are no fewer than 48 icebergs.
"It is quite close to where the Titanic went down," Bedford adds.
Weather man Chris Bedford (left) and navigator Jules Salter (right) assess conditions for Ericsson Racing Team's trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Image copyright Oskar Kihlborg/Ericsson Racing Team.
Pertinently, it is also right in the path of the fleet once they leave Boston and head north-east to avoid an exclusion zone placed to protect the North Atlantic Right Whale. To safeguard the yachts from the ice on their track the race organisation has added a second exclusion zone to the leg, keeping the fleet sufficiently away from the known populations.
In both the cases of whales and ice, there are no absolute guarantees of avoiding either. "Even from a plane flying over, there's so many white caps on the water you won't see everything," Salter adds. "It's certainly not impossible for the ice to get further south of the exclusion area."
He adds: "If you hit a whale you can lose the boat."
Then there's the debris. "There's a lot of stuff in the water," Salter says. "There is always plenty of debris out there because of the shipping.
"I was talking to Tony Mutter (Salter's Ericsson 4 team-mate) and he has done nine transatlantic crossing and hit something on seven of them. With ABN (AMRO ONE, Mutter's team in the last race) they potentially nearly lost the race. They hit a whale and broke a daggerboard and could have lost the boat. It's not an easy leg."
Indeed, on their way to Alicante before the race start PUMA hit something and lost a daggerboard.
The slide show continues with Bedford citing data that talks of five-metre waves and huge winds. He points to the track of low pressure storms close to Ireland. "We are heading into Spring so the storms should become a little less intense but there is still a very strong temperature contrast between the land and the ocean so that is causing some storms," he says. "So we expect to see a lot of tough conditions on this leg."
He returns to the ice exclusion area on the map. "The second windiest place in the world," he says.
There follows a discussion about the Gulf Stream and the possible costs and benefits of entering it.
"This would be favourable as there is maybe one or two or even three knots of current pushing you to the east," Bedford adds. "On the other hand, if the wind is from the east we could get big seas that are similar to those we saw off the Straits of Luzon and off Taiwan on leg four. Potentially boat-breaking conditions."
It seems more likely from early routing options that the fleet will stay further north, skirting the southern boundaries of the ice exclusion zone before getting free of restrictions and charging north-east to Galway. "It might well take the best part of a week to do the first 1,000 or 1,100 miles and then just a couple of days to do the rest of it," Salter says. "Plenty of challenges in there.
"It's probably an eight out of 10 in difficulty," he adds, ranking it beneath legs four and five. "There's a bit to worry about."
From his perspective, the worry is largely down to the forecast of prolonged spells of upwind sailing. "We should get a good fast run at the end of the leg, but a lot of it might be upwind.
"It's not our strongest area; we're maybe only the fourth or fifth fastest upwind."
It would not appear to have stopped the team so far. A glance at the scoreboard shows there are four legs remaining, one scoring gate and two in-port races, meaning a bounty of 44 points to a boat that scoops top honours at each station. In other words, if Ericsson 4 finish third at every remaining juncture they will beat Telefonica Blue, even if Bouwe Bekking's crew sweep all that lies ahead.
But what the briefing - and the recent history of this leg - shows is that are a number of unpredictable elements which could, on an unlucky day, trip them up.
"Anything can happen really," Salter adds. "Movistar is still floating out there somewhere. Or not.
"We think it's just a hop across to Ireland but a lot can happen. You can't take anything for granted."
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