Rick Tomlinson/Volvo Ocean Race
Sun 12 October 2008 10:00:00 GMT
THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 1, DAY 2
By Mark Chisnell
10:00 Zulu (GMT): Western Mediterranean
Episode 1, Season 1, Volvo Ocean 2008-09 – but is it going to be the improbable twists and torrid scenes of torture that characterise 24 or the ensemble cast, interwoven plots and gritty drama of The Wire?
If the start was anything to go by – all trigger happy Paps and blokes with bulges under their armpits – the better comparison would be Hola, or perhaps something off the extreme sports channel.
But for Bouwe Bekking aboard Telefonica Blue, it was… well, it was déjà vu, just like last time, as the first night jinx hit the Dutch skipper again. It started on Saturday afternoon, and the first sign was a gybe inshore at Islas Hormigas. It could have been a strategic move – but it turned out to be a failure in the rudder system, as skipper Bouwe Bekking explained in an email from the boat.
Initially, the team thought they might need a stop in Malaga to fix it, and continued heading inshore. But the engineering team aboard got stuck into it, and by the morning they were going again. Fingers crossed it holds because right now, Telefonica Blue aren’t looking as bad as they might, as the inshore track to Malaga has been the winning strategy - but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Rewind to the start - I won’t revisit the opening few hours, as they’re covered in the Live Blog. We’ll pick it up from where PUMA pulled into the lead as the fleet left Islas Hormigas.
They cut the corner on Ericsson 4, and managed to sail a little more westerly in their course and pull out in front of Torben Grael and his boys. At this stage the fleet were screaming downwind, with the wind shifting to allow them to point directly at the Straits of Gibraltar - it was a drag race, with the big gear up – the masthead spinnakers that make these boats the fastest monohulls on the planet.
Breakaway group
And that’s how it stayed until Cabo de Gata - PUMA leading the fleet south-west, and everyone else trailing more or less in her wake. They were about 18 miles south-east of the Cape when Ericsson 4 made her move, and headed inshore. They led a breakaway group of three which included Green Dragon, and Ericsson 4’s sistership - which makes you think this idea must have come up at Chris Bedford’s pre-start, team weather briefing.
About an hour later, Kenny Read aboard PUMA looks to have put a gybe in and thought about going with them – then changed his mind. PUMA have remained committed to the offshore road ever since – and Telefonica Black have stayed with them.
It’s a decision that I suspect Read will currently be regretting more than not hoisting that Code Zero sail for the first In-Port race – as it started to get flaky.
Before yesterday’s start, race forecaster Jennifer Lilly had anticipated the wind dropping after about 12 hours of fast sailing – and getting as low five knots by the time anyone got to Gibraltar.
And she was pretty much bang on - PUMA and Telefonica Black started to slow around midnight. But the breeze was holding up on the shore, inside the Bay of Malaga - which, with a terrifying inevitability, I had warned about as being a light air, sand-trap in the Leg Preview. And the Ericsson boys were making hay while the sun shone. Or rather, didn’t shine, as it was the middle of the night.
The Ericsson pair remained committed to the beach, following the coast, and doing the full ‘Buffalo Gals’ (Go Round the Outside, as the Malcolm McLaren song would have it). Although they look to have hit some light air it was nowhere near as bad as for the offshore group.
They were spat out into the lead, and by dawn Ericsson 3 and 4 were jousting for the front –just half a mile between them - but having pulled a full 35+ miles out of PUMA and Telefonica Black.
The other grinners as the sun rose over the Mediterranean were Green Dragon. They had played a middle road – along with Team Russia and Delta Lloyd – gybing inshore with the Ericsson boats, but not going right to the beach. The move put them into third, and at the 07:00 GMT position report they had consolidated that gain, gathering back into a tight group with PUMA, Telefonica Black and Team Russia - all four boats spread across just seven miles.
Stuck in a pothole, wheels spinning
Only Delta Lloyd have dropped off the back of the fleet – initially going further offshore than PUMA, but then taking a disastrous gybe back towards the coast and getting stuck in a pothole, wheels spinning, until they found themselves 72 miles behind the lead - and still behind Telefonica Blue.
It’s not turned out so bad at all for Bouwe and his mates, whose inshore route towards Malaga turned out to the right weather call, and they are actually back up to fourth at the 10:00 GMT report.
So what happens next? The eternal question – do the markets continue to crumble and the world to burn, or should we all start buying on Monday morning when the Dow, Footsie and bourses across Europe reopen?
Sorry, hauling my attention back to the yacht race – and this part is a little more technical. It’s forecast to get lighter and trickier as the day goes on, but with a 35 mile lead on third placed Green Dragon, I don’t think much can stop the Ericsson boats exiting the Straits first (I’ve ordered humble pie for tomorrow’s breakfast, just in case).
And what breeze they will get is now forecast to come from the east – which means they will be gybing downwind in light air, wrestling with the current and coastal effects of the Straits. So maybe there is potential for that big lead to evaporate.
The Dragons have done a good job of hauling themselves out a little lead from the pack that were together at sunrise. Only Telefonica Black has attempted to create some leverage, and they’ve done it by going south – we’ll see how that one works out, but given that the northerly inshore route has been the winner so far, I would probably have stayed with the opposition. And right now, any of these boats could be third out of the Straits.
Once out into the Atlantic, the Deckman for Windows weather routing is showing that they should see a southerly breeze to start with out in the Atlantic – maybe 10 knots southerly. That’s a good sailing breeze, but it’s not the north-easterly trade wind.
They won’t hit that till early Monday morning, so there’s a transition zone to come and that could create a passing lane. The routing takes them down the coast of Africa, then through the Canaries before taking a wind shift to get west, and set up for the Doldrums. Tomorrow we’ll see who, if anyone, takes that option.
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).