News Archive

Sent: 10 March 2006

To: Duty Officers

INTENSE

It's a very intense atmosphere onboard Brasil 1 right now. Lot's of times I have been asked; "what is the worst about this race?". They expect to hear about the cold storms in the south. But no, the worst is simply no wind. Less wind gives you less options, and higher probability that the competitors have more of it. We have about 250 Nm to go now. In our world that's normally achievable in less than a day, but as the wind is slowly dropping and right now on the nose, Rio seems close but still so far away.

Last night we entered into a tight battle with ABN2, slowly catching them up from behind and in the end positioning ourselves to weather in a controlling position. This was the first time we have seen any boat with our own eyes since the day after the start in Wellington. We might look close on Virtual Spectator at times, but really it's impossible to see a VO70 from any further distance than 9 Nm. For sure being close to someone sparks some extra energy onboard. Tacks and re-stacking goes faster than normal. All kinds of devices, such as night vision binoculars, radar and hand bearing compasses, are up and running to make sure we know their moves at any time. Right now we have them at 90 degrees on our beam about 9 Nm to leeward.

As all predictions show very light and variable winds from now on, until a stronger southeasterly fills in from behind, it really feels like walking on very thin ice. We know for sure that whoever is behind, has a good chance of catching up, and we know that failing to judge any rain cloud around us right, could cost us a lot of miles. We already experienced that some days ago, when we parked up in the middle of a rain cloud, losing a lot to everyone. Now, we have repaired the radar, and hopefully we are better prepared for the next one. Talking about rain clouds, we just saw a waterspout about a mile away from us. Pretty impressive feature, seeing water being sucked up from the sea, straight into the air - not a good place to swim.

So, as we are very keen to advance on the scoreboard this leg, we still have to be very careful right now, making sure that we always place ourselves conservatively to the new wind we think will fill in. The two major weather models we use show quite different scenarios. For sure when we get closer to the coast, we have a few smart and local heads onboard, but that is still far away, at least with the speed we are doing now.

Still some food left onboard, and although we wish the finishing miles were much faster, we have to admit that a really slow finish creates some opportunities we want and need. So, Rio will have to wait for us a little more. Right now we should be finishing tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon, and what's better than finishing in Rio on a Saturday?

But until then we have a job to do. I will sneak back up on deck. It's really quiet right now. Not much talking. Just the occasionally: "Need more power! Ease check stay! Less Runner! More runner! Dump the keel five degrees!"

As this leg is coming to an end, and it's definitely my last daily report for a long time, thanks to all our shore crew, sponsors and friends. It's great to be Brazilian for a while!

It just started raining, but this cloud is our friend, we pass nicely to leeward of it, and it gives us some extra knots of what we desperately need to breathe and live: More wind!

See you soon back "home" in Rio!

Knut

Onboard Brasil 1, 250 Nm from Rio

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