Guo Chuan/Green Dragon/Volvo Ocean Race
The only time you can be sure where you stand relative to someone else is when the leverage is zero. And crossing in front of PUMA is one of those times – score one to the Dragon
Tuesday 18 November 2008 10:00 GMT
THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 2, DAY 4
By Mark Chisnell
It’s dark, you’re tired, rolling down an unfamiliar freeway, hunched over the wheel, nothing but a hotel bed to look forward to, asking yourself – where’s the goddam exit?
The strategists aboard the Volvo Open 70s will be asking themselves just that question this morning, as they keep the hammer down and head east in plenty of south-westerly breeze – the exits for Cochin are coming up, but it’s a big place, and some of them lead right to the centre, and some of them trail round the suburbs. At least if you miss the one you want, it looks like they’ve finished the rest of the freeway ...
By 10:00 ZULU this morning, strategies were starting to harden and the fleet had split into two. In the north, PUMA had pushed through to lead the charge east, with Telefonica Blue drifting north of them, while Telefonica Black and Delta Lloyd were running behind PUMA in line astern.
Eighty miles to the south Ericsson 3 and 4 were in line abreast, with Green Dragon tucked in just behind them, and Team Russia trailing this group by about 60 miles. The scoring gate at 58degE was just over 800 miles to the east, and Ericsson 4 was closest to it. Cochin, meanwhile, was just over 3,500 miles to the north-east, and PUMA was closest (as an aside, the waypoint info BRG_WPT and DIST_WPT in the Data Centre is currently measured to the northern tip of the scoring gate).
PUMA wanted to swop sides pretty badly
It doesn’t take me to point out that this is a pretty intriguing situation. It started to set-up this way when Ken Read and Andrew Cape gybed PUMA yesterday morning, just after 08:00 ZULU. Terrible timing guys, it throws my whole story way too close to the deadline ...
Everyone else was good enough to stay on starboard, running downwind, going south-east. PUMA sailed on port for three hours, then gybed back. There’s been nothing off the boat explaining the strategy, but I think that they just wanted to swop sides, preferring the northern high road, to the southern low road. The wind shift that we described yesterday, the unexpected veer back towards the west, gave them the perfect opportunity to do it – on port gybe, a veering wind was taking them more east, and that was good.
But they wanted to swop sides pretty badly, happy to sail away from Torben Grael and Ericsson 4, and close down the leverage and accept the loss to Green Dragon.
PUMA were 15 minutes behind Ian Walker and his team when their tracks crossed (Walker reported a six mile advantage, and a subsequent ugly wipe-out).
Delta Lloyd put a little cash in the northern hedge fund
Remember, PUMA had tacked in front of the Dragon on Saturday evening as they both started to head south-east. It’s back to the leverage thing again – the only time you can be absolutely sure where you stand relative to someone else is when the leverage is zero. And crossing in front of them is one of those times – score one to the Dragon.
Delta Lloyd also put a little cash in the northern hedge fund, spending a couple of hours on port through the early afternoon, before gybing back to starboard. Team Russia’s investment was more token, and it might well have just been the effect of the crash that Andreas Hanakamp described in an email last night.
As the rest of the day unfolded, the north-south divide hardened, with the fleet splitting into their two distinct groups. If you check out today’s graph of True Wind Angle and True Wind Speed for Telefonica Blue and Ericsson 4 (TWA and TWS in the Data Centre) Ericsson 4 has sailed narrower True Wind Angles.
This difference has helped to widen the gap between the two groups, as the southern bunch head slightly south of east, and the northern team sail lower and slightly north of east. The difference could be one of technique, sails or strategy.
The low pressure ride should carry them to the scoring gate
But you can see from the TWS graph and the numbers in the Data Centre that these are very general trends, laid over some pretty messy data. And the reality of that messy data is big squalls blowing out of nowhere – back to black.
The boats are seeing gusts of over 40 knots (MAX_TWS3 in the Data Centre) and waves of five to six metres (MAX_WV_HGT), as Bouwe Bekking reported from Telefonica Blue. Given that several boats have men down with sickness, these are not easy miles - fast, but not easy.
So, what next?
Race Forecaster, Jennifer Lilly, explains the current situation in this morning’s analysis, which agrees with Matt Gregory’s take on life in his email from Delta Lloyd. Their feeling is that the low pressure ride should carry them all the way to the scoring gate at 58degE.
I’ve done a run of the Deckman for Windows weather routing for Ericsson 4, with the target set as 58degE, on their current line of latitude. The red line running east to west is the Predicted Route, the red line running north to south is the isochrone arriving at 58degE, and the weather is what’s expected on the evening of the 21st, when they should get to the scoring gate.
But there’s a Third Way ...
As you can see, there’s no shortage of south-westerly breeze to get them there, although the Predicted Route shows a couple of gybes (the kinks in the line) as they ride the fronts.
The second Deckman for Windows image shows PUMA’s position, with the Predicted Route heading for the Chagos Islands, which are on the historical optimum developed for us by Adrienne Cahalan. I’ve run the isochrone out to the same time as that on the first image, and marked the longitude of the scoring gate at 58degE with a red cross.
So you can see the huge separation that we could have in three days time if the boats chose to prioritise the leg win over the scoring gate, or vice versa.
But, there’s a Third Way ... The Predicted Data in the Data Centre and on the Leaderboard is calculated as though everyone was headed to Cochin. And that shows Ericsson 4 coming through to lead in five days time (+5DPDTL in the Data Centre), from Ericsson 3, and then PUMA. And Torben Grael and his boys will remain the most easterly boat as they do it – potentially picking up all the chocolates in the process.
But that’s five days time, and it’s a weather forecast. It could unravel in any number of ways – where is the exit ramp to Cochin? It’s not quite a matter of loaf and death, but its close.
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).