Rick Tomlinson/Volvo Ocean Race
It was like the Glorious Twelfth - someone put the beaters into the grouse moor and the fleet scattered
Sunday 16 November 2008 10:00 GMT
THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 2, DAY 2
By Mark Chisnell
After scattering across the Atlantic at sunset, the fleet came back together for the dawn patrol – led by, you’ve guessed it… Ericsson 4 and PUMA. It didn’t take long for Torben Grael and Kenny Read to pick up where they left off – pouring it on, side by side, toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball - but for a while there, it was looking very different, until first Read, then Grael blinked ...
At 10:00 ZULU this morning, the fleet were all on starboard gybe in a fast strengthening westerly breeze of about 18 to 22 knots True Wind Speed (TWS in the Data Centre), with Ericsson 4 and PUMA dragging the fleet to the east-southeast. In their wake, but on a line slightly further north and to leeward, were Telefonica Black, Green Dragon, Ericsson 3, Telefonica Blue and Delta Lloyd – with the Russians setting up a lonely outpost in the west (see what I did there… the eyeball link… oh never mind ...).
But what of that long night of fisticuffs down the Cape of Good Hope? I’ll pick it up from yesterday’s live blog, where we left the fleet at Duikerpunt. The Ericsson boats, followed by Green Dragon and Telefonica Blue, had just taken the lead by getting close into the coast.
It was here that PUMA had to blink first, cutting her losses from her offshore position, and heading back into the beach to pick up the chase. From there, everyone played their short game and kept it tight until the Cape of Good Hope, beating upwind into a moderate south to south-east breeze of about 15 knots.
Once they got to the Cape, things started to open up – actually, it was more like the Glorious Twelfth - someone put the beaters into the grouse moor and the fleet scattered. Telefonica Black had been playing the outside, offshore lane all the way down, but it was the Green Dragon that made the first real move away from the beach about 16:00 last night, staying on port tack in the southerly, taking the road less travelled (as opposed to the road not taken at all). PUMA peeled off and followed them an hour later.
But everyone else kept going on starboard past the Cape and across the mouth of False Bay. As the sun set and into early evening, we had about 40 miles of separation between the two flanks of the fleet. Yup, the L-word is back (and not just because of the election) – Leverage – a measure of risk in sailboat racing, as it is for financial markets.
Then Grael blinked and set off after PUMA
Leverage is the lateral separation of the fleet across the race course, perpendicular to where they want to go, and it was opening quickly between the overall leaders. Then Grael blinked - maybe he got the setting sun in his eyes – and at about 18:30, Ericsson 4 tacked and set off after PUMA.
Green Dragon continued going on port tack, until she was about 50 miles south-west of the Cape of Good Hope, before tacking back to starboard just before 21:00 ZULU last night. Soon afterwards, PUMA crossed in front and joined the Dragon on starboard – and with Grael and Ericsson 4 already headed out from False Bay, the leverage was closing as fast as it had opened, but who would come out in front?
Grael could see the whites of Read’s eyes when he tacked to leeward and ahead. Ok, maybe not quite that close, but plenty close enough for the mano e mano battle at the top of rankings to resume. It was a gain to PUMA, although Ericsson 4 still held the advantage. And it was one-and-one for Ericsson 4 v PUMA, Read v Grael, Cape v Salter and the inshore route versus the offshore alternative.
The rest of the fleet fell into line, tacking to leeward of the lead pair over the next hour or two. There are some pretty erratic sections of the boat’s tracks overnight, it looks like there were some sand traps out there for the unwary. But Bouwe Bekking is the only one to report any issues this morning. I guess we’re all still getting back into our stride.
Everyone going at right angles to the destination
Aboard Team Russia, navigator Wouter Verbraak has been doing his thing of swopping sides with the fleet at every possible opportunity – they were furthest inshore at False Bay, and by this morning they were furthest west, consistently inconsistent. Verbraak has been able to do that because overnight the breeze has shifted significantly. They started on starboard tack, beating into a southerly, then at about midnight the wind started to veer, rotating clockwise (looking into the wind) round to the west, over the next couple of hours.
Today’s graph shows how although they have changed course slightly to go a little more east, mostly the skippers have just let the True Wind Angle (TWA in the Data Centre) get wider, changing through the sails, from headsails to spinnakers as it did so. I would have put Team Russia on the graph for you - to show how they sailed a tighter wind angle for longer to swop sides – but their instruments aren’t sending anything apart from the basics at the moment.
Space Mountain or Merry Go Round?
But the Predicted Data Table in the Data Centre, the Predicted Tab on the Leaderboard and the wind arrows in the Race Viewer (click on the ‘three arrow’ icon above the map) tell us why everyone is still going south-east, despite the fact that Africa isn’t in the way any more. There is a small but nasty low, inbound at seven o’clock. It’s another race south, and I’ve run out of husky links…
But I do have my trusty Deckman for Windows, and I’ve run the Predicted Route for Ericsson 4’s position at 09:30 ZULU, with the latest weather file. It shows that they don’t have to go much further south to pick up the inbound low pressure system. The ride starts here. The big question is – which ride? Take a look at the five day isochrone (the furthest extent of the spider’s web, the line of places that the boats can get to in five days). If you want to get maximum points at the scoring gate at 58degE, you need to heat it up and go further south now, sending it into the stronger breeze. If you don’t, if the leg win is more important, it looks like it makes more sense to keep it further north, in easier conditions.
So is it going to be Space Mountain or the Merry Go Round? The former will mean ski masks, crash helmets, survival suits and clenched sphincters for a couple of days. And pretty quickly we’re going to see who are the quick learners from the heavy running conditions of the first leg - anyone going to step up and take on the champs?
I’d be going down the middle - aiming at the section of the five day isochrone that starts to curve to the west quite quickly – at pretty much the latitude of Cape Town. This would keep the options open for as long as possible, to both score points at the gate, and stay in the running for the leg win. But in the next 24 hours we’ll see how the boys on board want to play it, rather than the armchair quarterback sleeping in a dry bed...
The TEN ZULU REPORT (so called because it follows the 10:00 GMT fleet position report, and Zulu is the meteorologist's name for GMT).