Horns of a dilemma

Tuesday 28 October 2008 10:00 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 1, DAY 18

By Mark Chisnell

The bull rope is hauled tight, rosin thick on the leather glove, damp with the sweat of an anxious rider. The raging bull snorts, the crowd hush in anticipation ... waiting for gate to open. The longest eight seconds in sport.

When it kicks off, it’s going to be a lot more than eight seconds for the men of the Volvo Ocean Race fleet. To the south, that much discussed low pressure system is still panting and snorting away, fully aware of what’s expected of it, demanding respect and sending ripples of nerves through the fleet – but the gate hasn’t been flung open, yet ...

At 10:00 ZULU this morning, the fleet were headed south-east on port gybe – with Ericsson 4 in the lead. The breeze has continued to slowly back, rotating anticlockwise, and it is now blowing from the north-northwest for almost everyone.

And while it’s freshened this morning – after an overnight dip – it’s into the mid-high 20s, with the waves under two metres and the water temperature still around 20 degrees, these are perfect sailing conditions. And the fleet have been clicking through the miles like a 32-wheeler on the interstate – steady, unspectacular.

The top of the leaderboard has been anything but steady, as Ken Read and his team aboard the PUMA took the lead yesterday afternoon, only to watch it slip away again this morning.

The action started shortly after the TEN ZULU was filed yesterday. As the morning wore on, PUMA began to sail a little lower, a little more south – ‘soaking’ (as the jargon would have it) to leeward of Torben Grael and the Ericsson 4. PUMA was also going slower to do it, but she was opening leverage.

’Oh to be in three places at once’

Aboard Ericsson 4, navigator, Jules Salter, fretted on their circumstances yesterday lunchtime, “Green Dragon in the south, to Telefonica Blue to the north, all have better wind than us right now – the Irish have probably got themselves into the best position leverage wise for a move to the front of the pack ... we shall see. Problem for us is how to minimize the losses against these guys ... and then on the smaller scale keeping the PUMA at bay … Oh to be in three places at once.’

At just after 15:00 GMT, Salter and Grael decided that enough was enough – they gybed to starboard and headed south-southwest. PUMA’s leverage might not have been the reason (she was actually positioned due west of Ericsson 4) – perhaps it was the knowledge that there should be more wind in the south, closer to the centre of the low pressure system. Or perhaps it was threat of Green Dragon, already 15 miles down that way, snorting and blowing smoke from her cave. More likely, it was a combination of all these things.

Aboard PUMA, Ken Read reflected, “They're gone! Ericsson 4 gybed and crossed our bow by about 20 boat lengths earlier this afternoon, ending an incredible run of being neck and neck. They are heading south, presumably looking for more wind. We kind of like where we are right now and decided to end our little boat on boat battle ...”

Torben Grael carried on for about 45 minutes, then gybed back. But it was all time spent on starboard gybe, sailing at right angles to the course to Cape Town (Compare Heading (HDG) to Bearing to the Waypoint (BRG_WPT) in the Data Centre). And as far as the leaderboard was concerned, it was all loss – by the 16:00 Position Report, PUMA was into the lead. Not for long – making gains all night, Grael and Salter either found better pressure down there, or used the southerly leverage to sail a faster True Wind Angle. The Ericsson 4 went straight through to leeward of PUMA and into the lead at 10:00 ZULU.

The pack are fanned out around her. They aren’t quite headed for Cape Town, everyone is still sailing their optimum True Wind Angle (TWA in the Data Centre) for downwind (around 140), rather than pointing at the finish. The navigators still want to get closer to the low pressure’s storm track. But the Distance to Leader (DTL) is a lot more meaningful than it was a couple of days ago.

Back markers on a yo-yo

Today’s graph shows both the Gains and Losses made to the Leader in the Last 24 Hours (DTLC24), and the Predicted Time to Leader (PTTL) up to 07:00 ZULU.

Apart from the PUMA and Ericsson 4 swop at the front, it’s all remarkably steady in the leading pack – particularly when you consider that there are boats from five different design teams out there. The two back markers have been on a bit of a yo-yo (it’s the new squeeze box) but that’s as much about their different positioning as it is about raw speed differences.

They are all sailing just ahead of the cold front, which runs north-west from the centre of the low pressure, which is due south of them and moving east. It’s giving them almost the perfect sailing angle for Cape Town. It looks like they can hold this position, with north-westerly breeze in the 25-35 knot range, for at least a couple of days. Although there is stronger breeze (the anticipated 40+ knots) closer to the centre of the weather system, the Predicted Routes don’t think they need to go there for the optimum path to the finish.

Looking at the Predicted Routes in the Race Viewer, the best option goes no further south than 34deg – which will cheer up Jonathan Swain, watch captain on Telefonica Blue, as he’s forgotten his boots (and a man of his experience really should know better, given that every last toilet roll can now be stacked on the windward side and the old ‘boots or shoes’ issue has become moot.)

Straight-forward drag race

But … after a couple of days the wind starts to get a little flaky on this option, and it wouldn’t take much of a change in the path or strength of the low pressure system to drop them in an area of much lighter wind. The alternative is to just bury the boat into the south, but even that option has its risks – you could end up beating into Cape Town against a strong northerly, or in the same light patch. All that is a couple of days away, the next 48 hours look to be a relatively straight-forward drag race in some great conditions. But after that, all bets are off …

And finally, a footnote with a full technical content warning. I got some good feedback on my assessment, yesterday, that Green Dragon had found themselves a nice right hand shift to get further south on – a comment which accompanied this graph.

It shows the difference in wind direction between the Dragon and the nearest boats, but as Gavin Cooke rightly pointed out to me in an email – if you go back further in time, the Dragon’s wind direction has actually been 20 degrees to the right of the boats around her since the 23rd October.

Go back further still, and you’ll see that although they matched for a few days, prior to that the error was there again. I thought this difference might be due to the magnetic declination i.e. Green Dragon is sending us a True Wind Direction based on true north, and the rest are using magnetic north as the base. But the difference in declination over their positions from the last week doesn’t seem to explain it. So I’m stuck – I’ll try to talk to Green Dragon navigator, Ian Moore about it in Cape Town and report back ...

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).