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Having had excellent luck with a quick path through the doldrums, the leading pack of four have successfully entered the southeast trade winds blowing across the equator from the Southern Hemisphere. After several days of fast reaching north of the doldrums, the wind angles are now tighter as the boats negotiate their way toward the first scoring gate at Fernando de Noronha. Wind speeds have recovered from a remarkably healthy 10-12 knots in the doldrums to 15-18 knots in the southeast trades.
Relatively even and steady conditions are expected across the fleet for the next 24 hours. This will leave few opportunities for Ericsson, Brasil 1 and ABN AMRO TWO to close the gap with the leader. In fact, as the boats make further progress toward the south, the winds will start to back left, opening the wind angle to a reaching mode – the mode in which ABN AMRO ONE has shown formidable strength. With wind speeds holding mainly a moderate strength, ABN AMRO ONE may very well start to widen its lead once further.
Sunergy and Friends is north of the doldrums and tooling along in 15 knots of northeast trade wind. Unfortunately, their path through the doldrums does not look to be as easy as the first four boats experienced. Some squalls and thunderstorms have developed along a line about five deg north and now separate the northeast trade winds from the southeast trade winds. Sunergy and Friends will have to negotiate these squalls with strong wind gusts followed by frustrating lulls, before they will be rewarded with the southeast trades and the first hints of the Southern hemisphere weather.
In the long term, the navigators are already carefully studying the position and strength of the South Atlantic high – also known as the St Helena Anticylone after the small British Overseas Territory located in the central South Atlantic Ocean between Angola and Brazil. The center of this high is often located near St Helena and lies directly in the path between the scoring gate and Leg 1 finish at Cape Town.
Rather than immediately turning from the scoring gate to the southeast and on a direct course to the finish, the crews will keep their bows pointed almost due south for several days. The plan will be to make as much southerly progress as possible in order to negotiate the more favorable downwind sailing conditions on the western periphery of the South Atlantic high. Then, once far enough south, the boats will hope to pick up the stronger westerly component winds associated with lows and frontal systems over the far southern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. These westerly component winds will carry them on a more speedy path to cape Town.
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