Chasing the Dragon

Thursday 23 October 2008 1000 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 1, DAY 13

Green Dragon was about 20 miles from getting the chocolates at the scoring gate of Fernando de Noronha at 10:00 ZULU this morning, after 24 hours of maximum power sailing – upwind and close reaching in 20 knots of breeze. Every last baby wipe and muesli bar will be stacked on the weather side in the quest for maximum juice, as the Dragon tries to hold off the charge from behind her – the gap back to PUMA was reduced to 20 miles this morning.

But PUMA has her hands full with Torben Grael and his team aboard Ericsson 4, who have wound in almost all of the six-mile deficit they suffered 24 hours ago. It’s down to sabres and no quarter for the second place points, because while PUMA may have more pieces on the chess board, Ericsson 4 has a better tactical position.

To get some traction on this struggle, we‘re going to have to get our hands dirty with the details – so there’s a technical content warning in place from the outset this morning (while for those of you with more sailing knowledge, this next part might seem a little pedestrian) – but hey, you can’t please everyone all the time. So, cover me I’m going in …

In these conditions, it’s all about Righting Moment – which is to the Volvo Ocean Race crews what horsepower is to Lewis Hamilton. And the chasing pair, PUMA and Ericsson 4, seem to have a little more of it than Green Dragon - that could be hull design, sail development, or just because they have been pushing each other to the limit.

Righting moment is a measure of the boat’s ability to resist the pressure of the wind trying to push her over sideways. It only matters when the boat is going upwind or reaching, and she is heeling (the Data Centre number HEEL tells you how much). The resistance to the heeling force of the wind comes from the lead in the keel, the boat’s shape, and the weight that can be placed on the windward side.

‘Everything on board is stacked to windward’

And when you’re reaching or sailing upwind as the fleet is at the moment, then the more righting moment the better. That’s why you’ll read about stacking in the emails from the boats (Andreas Hanakamp commented, ‘Everything on board is stacked to windward to get every bit of righting moment we can’). Stacking means moving all the weight to windward, to increase the righting moment, and decrease the heel.

The other thing that’s been critical to the last 24 hours is position. Way back when, in the Leg 1 Preview, I mentioned that if you exited into the south-east trade winds too far west, you’d end up hard on the wind. And this is what’s happened to Green Dragon.

When we left the fleet yesterday, everyone was apparently smoking down the rhumb line in 20 knots of south-easterly breeze and pointed at Fernando de Noronha. Or so it seemed, but initial appearances are deceptive. And as the day wore on it became increasingly clear that the leading trio weren’t quite pointing at the mark, but instead seemed intent on a weekend break on the beaches of the Rio Grande do Norte.

The Dragon’s Heading (Data Centre HDG), which tells you where she’s pointing (while Course Over the Ground, or Data Centre COG, tells you where she’s actually going) was some 15 to 20 degrees to the right (imagine yourself looking forwards from the bow of Green Dragon) of the course to Fernando de Noronha (BRG_WPT in the Data Centre) through most of yesterday. But the Dragon’s True Wind Angle (TWA) was just over 40 degrees on port tack, sailing upwind, as close as they could go, unable to get to the scoring gate without a tack.

But in the early evening they were rescued by a wind shift to the east – Green Dragon’s True Wind Direction (TWD) went from around 150 at the 16:00 Position Report, to the low 130s by the 22:00 Report. That was a get-out-jail-for-free card. It allowed them to turn the boat and get up to the island.

True Wind Angle has counted

But it’s been slow – the other thing that has counted in the last 24 hours is True Wind Angle. To point at the island, they would have had to sail closer to the wind, with a narrower True Wind Angle (TWA) than boats to the east. And in a Volvo Open 70 in 20 knot trade winds, that’s slower. This is something that you will have to take my word for at the moment, but we’ll be able to show you it when we have enough data off the boats to get the Data Centre Form Guide up and running.

I’ve pulled up a couple of graphs that show the variations in the fleet over the last 24 hours, which will help to give you a feel for what’s going on. If you click on the graphs link, you’ll see Heel and True Wind Angle plotted.

The most obvious difference is that Delta Lloyd (white), who are further east than Team Russia (yellow), have a wider TWA and less HEEL – and that’s the key to their speed advantage. Sailing lower and faster (as the jargon has it) they’ve driven right over the top of Andreas Hanakamp – who saw it coming this morning, “Just a question of time until they roll us …” The same margins are true of Ericsson 4 and PUMA – although the difference is smaller – and so were the gains.

So much for today – by the time you read this, the chances are that Green Dragon will have rounded Fernando de Noronha, the champagne will all have been drunk and the focus is switching to the route to Cape Town. Race Forecaster, Jennifer Lilly, explains what faces them in today’s forecast - it’s all about getting south to get around the South Atlantic High.

The Predicted Routes in the Race Viewer currently show the leaders taking a short hitch to the east once they get round the island. This is based on the NOAA forecast, but (as the alert reader will know) it contradicts my preferred, historically-favoured option. In almost all of the recent races, the boat that went south first and hardest from Fernando de Noronha won the leg, and I have a feeling that this is what they will all do.

They will be able to get south quite happily in the trade winds for a couple of days, before having to negotiate the high pressure. This looks to be leaving a band of stronger breeze down the Brazilian coast, not unlike the one we saw off the African coast that Delta Lloyd used so effectively past the Canary Islands.

So the track they take away from Fernando de Noronha over the next 24 hours could prove critical in the couple of days that then follows. Whatever, the strait jacket that has constrained the fleet is about to ease, and it’s game on again for the strategic teams aboard each boat once they get past the gate.