Stuck in the middle

Monday 27 October 2008 10:00 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 1, DAY 17

Ericsson 4 and PUMA remain glued together as they hurtle south-east towards their rendezvous with Brazil’s wild child. But three’s a crowd, and Torben Grael and Kenny Read will both be anxious to dump their current dance partner and go home alone with this Brazilian beauty (and you really weren’t expecting me to link to the other Tarantino scene?).

At 10:00 ZULU this morning, the leaders were running a line down the middle of a fleet fanned out behind them, to the north and the south, all heading south-east on port gybe in a freshening northerly wind. It’s been a night of shuffling which has seen the skippers and navigators aboard each boat finally reveal their strategies for the incoming low pressure.

If you’re now asking yourself – what low pressure? – having just rejoined us after a computer-free weekend, you could do worse than catch up on Saturday and Sunday’s TEN ZULU – but here’s the storyline anyway …

The fleet are skirting round the centre of a ridge of high pressure. It’s called the South Atlantic High – and if you imagine the high as a clock face, the leaders are at about eight o’clock, with the rest of the fleet spread back to 10 o’clock. The wind flows anti-clockwise around a high pressure in the Southern Hemisphere, so Ericsson 4 has a breeze slightly west of north, and Team Russia have their wind from slightly east of north.

The stakes are high

Meanwhile, for several days now, the forecasts have shown a strong low pressure system spinning up off the coast of Brazil, and heading east towards the finish. Everyone’s strategy has been focused on positioning their boat to get into the breeze off this low pressure, riding it east as the weather system sets off towards Cape Town.

The timing of this departure is such that it’s a lot harder for the boats at the back of the fleet to pull this trick, than the leaders. And the stakes are high – anyone who gets it wrong can expect to see their deficit blow out to several hundred miles before they’re sipping ice cold beers at the bars of the race village.

At the head of the pack Ericsson 4 and PUMA are still no more than three miles apart – stuck in the middle, eyeball to eyeball.

It’s hard to tell who led the dance last night, as someone decided that they needed to be a little further south to get in position for the low pressure. Both boats gybed just before 18:00. They sailed south-west on starboard for a little over an hour, then gybed back together. They’ve been going south-east ever since. No point either of these two trying a StealthPlay while they have target lock on the radar.

The chasing pair close behind them have edged further south (dropping further behind on the leaderboard as a consequence – it’s still not really about the Distance to Leader (DTL)) –Green Dragon making the more aggressive move overnight, with Telefonica Black splitting the difference between them and the leaders. What’s interesting about Green Dragon is that she’s spent about the same amount of time on starboard as PUMA and Ericsson 4, but has been able to sail lower, getting further south.

I think I’ve found the reason in today’s graph. By staying a little further west, they seem to have kept themselves in a wind direction that’s east of north – compared to the true northerly that Ericsson 4 and PUMA have. It should take them closer to the centre of the low and into more breeze.

Trying to cut the corner

The drop in True Wind Speed (TWS) overnight is also visible for all of them, as they crossed the edge of the ridge of high pressure.

On the opposite side of the race track, to the north-east, closest to the centre of the high and the dangerous area of light air was Telefonica Blue – her greater and more sustained drop in wind speed is clear in the graph (the blue line). They are trying to cut the corner, taking the risk of sailing too close to the centre of the high, trying to get further east to pick up the low pressure.

To return to the (rapidly becoming over-worked) buses/trains departure metaphor – the trailing boats that are going east think they’ll miss the train’s departure from the big city, and are hoping to hop aboard as it slows through the first provincial station – prison awaits for anyone who fails.

Telefonica Blue navigator, Simon Fisher was worrying about flying too close to the sun in a Sunday evening email, “I cannot help feeling slightly nervous. We are set up a little to the east of our guys ahead … it makes me feel slightly uneasy being closer to the high pressure system than them.”

This morning, Telefonica Blue’s skipper, Bouwe Bekking, was reflecting on a close call, “Last night we had to sail the unfavoured gybe several times, as we were getting too close to the ridge of high pressure. So we actually had to sail away from Cape Town to stay in the breeze … It just hurts badly… but we know that this was the right call.”

I can understand Bekking and Fisher’s move to cut the corner. They have a good lead on the guys behind, and if they follow the boats in front they aren’t going to pass them. Their best move, their only move, is to do something different, and cutting the corner to get a jump on the leading four is the one.

So, how’s it going to play out?

Put the hammer down

On the latest NOAA weather forecast, the low is centred at about 33degS 42degW (to the south-southwest of the fleet) at lunchtime today. It deepens significantly as gets moving east, and it is going to put the hammer down once it gets going. By Wednesday lunchtime, my best estimate (and I’m not a meteorologist) is that it’s centred at around 45degS and 9degW. That means it’s doing about 800 miles a day. That’s too fast for even a Volvo Open 70, and it looks inevitable that the boats that are furthest south and east will get the ride for longer.

What does that mean for the fleet? Have a look at the Predicted Routes in the Race Viewer, or check out the numbers in the ‘Predicted’ tab of the Homepage Leaderboard, or in the Prediction Data Table in the Data Centre (sometimes when one boat’s position reports are slow coming through, these calculations don’t get done for anyone – hence the ‘No Data’) – and you’ll see our prediction of who’s going to be where in one (+1DPDTL), three (+3DPDTL) and five (+5DPDTL) days time.

Some of the emails from the boats have been talking about the press, talking about the 24-hour record – so I guess in a true post-modern, self-referential spirit, I’d better do just that …

It is on the cards, although they lack the advantage of the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. The biggest plus is that this low pressure system is going to sweep across an area of ocean that’s previously been calm. That means the water will be flat (keep an eye on Wave Height - WAVE_HGT in the Data Centre), and because the fleet will be moving with or behind the weather system, it should stay that way for a while.

So … hold your breath, they’re about to pull the trigger. Everyone needs to get the boat to Cape Town in one piece because it’s such a short stop-over, but with Ericsson 4 and PUMA in such close proximity, I just don’t see Ken Read or Torben Grael backing off. Nor should we underestimate the others - there are plenty of boats close enough to pounce on any error or breakdown.

This is where you need real strength in depth through the boat. Driving and trimming sails on these machines, downwind in big breeze, is a specialized skill, and if you’ve only got a couple of people that can handle it, they are going to get tired very quickly. But looking through the rosters on the contenders, there’s no shortage of talent – a lot of it coming from skiffs, the best training ground for this stuff.

And this one is for bragging rights, the overall lead (the top five on the water are currently tied on points) - and a very important psychological edge into the second leg.

Bring it on.

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).