Turnover pass

Friday 24 April 2009 10:00 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 6, DAY 14

By Mark Chisnell

There was a stunning turnover yesterday, as Ericsson 4 snatched the lead from Telefonica Blue with a knock-out blow of speed and strategy. They slipped into Stealth mode right after Bouwe Bekking and co., then timed their crucial turn to the north-west to perfection, sliding effortlessly into the lead as they went over the parapet and into a full assault on the front.

Torben Grael and his boys demonstrated once again why they are the overall leaders, and how good you’re going to have to be just to keep up, never mind pass them. But the action is a long way from over – don’t retune your set just yet. It isn’t all smooth sailing aboard Ericsson 4 – their watermaker has failed and that’s going to make it a thirsty couple of days – dehydrated brains are neither clear nor sharp.

At 10:00 ZULU this morning all seven boats were on port tack and headed north of the course to Boston. The leading group of Ericsson 4, Ericsson 3, Telefonica Blue and PUMA started to get the final wind shift to the north-west about three hours ago, marking the end of their extended battle with the frontal system. It had just reached the second group of Delta Lloyd, Green Dragon and Telefonica Black right on the Position Report.

Ericsson 4 leads her sistership. Ericsson 3 following in her wake with Telefonica Blue to the south-west, and PUMA to the south-east. While in the second group, Delta Lloyd holds the middle ground, with Telefonica Black to the south-west and Green Dragon to the east.

A huge amount of action to get through from the last 24 hours, and it all kicked off with Telefonica Blue’s StealthPlay, absent from our screens for three hours by the 10:00 ZULU Position Report yesterday morning. They were under huge pressure at the time, with Ericsson 4 driving straight up their tail pipe. We saw in yesterday’s .tv clip that they were planning their gybe for the morning. And sure enough, straight after the 07:00 ZULU Position Report (the last one for which they were visible), they peeled round onto port and headed for Boston. Ericsson 4 was just a couple of miles behind them.

Ericsson 4 was the next to gybe, but they waited more than three hours till 10:40, and responded with a tit-for-tat Stealthplay so that no one could see their move when the 13:00 ZULU Report was issued. Ericsson 4’s navigator, Jules Salter, set them up in a lane 80 miles to the north of Telefonica Blue. That was a whole lot of leverage - someone was going to be right and someone was going to be wrong.

Third-placed Ericsson 3 gybed just 15 minutes after her teammate and in a lane about 20 miles to the south. Fourth-placed PUMA waited another couple of hours, then gybed just before the 13:00 ZULU Position Report, which set them up as the most northerly boat, their lane was ten miles north of Ericsson 4’s. Delta Lloyd gybed to put herself in the middle of the fleet at 14:00, as did Green Dragon an hour and a half later. And while Telefonica Black gybed at about the same time as Delta Lloyd, she was much further south, and not far from the point that her teammate had gybed. They might have waited a little longer if they could have seen what had befallen Bouwe Bekking, but of course, they couldn’t – StealthPlay, love it or hate it, it shakes the fleet up.

The only people aware of the dire circumstances aboard Telefonica Blue were the boat’s own crew. But we can look back this morning and see it all happening in the Distance to Leader (DTL) and Leg Position (LEG_POSN) graphs. Telefonica Blue was already 20 miles behind Ericsson 4 at 13:00, by 16:00 they were 30 miles back and into third, and by 19:00 ZULU when they came out of Stealth, the deficit to the leader was 50 miles and they were fourth. Yikes.

What happened? Ironically, Bouwe Bekking called it himself, as he pointed out from the boat this morning. “I said it a couple of days ago: ‘You gybe too early and you run out of pressure, you gybe too late and you end up with a bad angle to the whale exclusion box, as the breeze will come rapidly forward until we are hard on the wind. That will be the race call.’ Well, we gybed too early, no excuse, it is a huge f”%k-up. The reality was that we couldn’t hold off Ericsson 4, they were sailing much faster than us last night, but by gybing too early we lost against the rest of the fleet.”

Nicely summed up, not much more I can add to that... well, maybe a little detail, but I should flag this up with a technical content warning...

Check out this image of the weather and boat positions at 07:00 this morning. It’s not been a simple transition through the cold front – you can see the extended area of light wind that the fleet has been struggling to clear. I think this has been caused by a ridge of high pressure pushing up from the south-west.

The ‘normal’ passage of a cold front would see a wind shift from the south to the south-west, and then quickly into the north-west as the front itself passed overhead. But what the fleet saw was a shift from the south to the west, accompanied by very light wind, then the breeze going back to the south-west before it strengthened and finally shifted to the north-west this morning.

Complicated – but you can track all these changes in this graph of wind speed (TWS) and wind direction (TWD). And you’ll see that the bottom line for Telefonica Blue was that their early gybe and southerly position meant that they spent longer in the light westerly wind than anyone else, and paid heavily for it in miles.

It was more straw poll than democratic vote, but the response from TEN ZULU readers was 100 percent in favour of the StealthPlay, and it certainly achieved its goal. It stopped the strategists aboard the boats from covering the moves, split the fleet wide open and has given us some serious action.

And it’s not just at the front of the fleet – Green Dragon has had a storming 24 hours, going past Telefonica Black (who were also to the south remember) and closing down Delta Lloyd. This fight is wide open, and Delta Lloyd’s navigator, Wouter Verbraak was clearly up for it this morning.

And this morning, the second part of Bekking’s prediction had come into play. Bekking also told us that anyone who went too far north before they gybed would suffer from a slower wind angle on the other side of the cold front. And sailing in the south-westerly earlier this morning was when Telefonica Blue needed to get some payback from their southern position, and the sailing angle it gave them.

It’s the old one about the wider and faster wind angle. Click on the Form Guide tab in the Data Centre, set the Wind Speed (TWS) to 16 knots, then move the Wind Angle (TWA) indicator to first 80 degrees, and then 100 degrees and you’ll find that 100 degrees is a couple of knots quicker. Telefonica Blue had been sailing the wider, faster angle for most of this morning, closing down the leverage. And Bekking and his crew were back into third and catching Ericsson 3 at 10:00 ZULU, after a string of positive Position Reports (click on the link to see a nice clip from PUMA, showing how the Reports are processed by the skipper, navigator and crew). But with the shift to the north-westerly, everyone was now going upwind, and the game has changed again.

So let’s take a look at the Predicted Route image showing weather and boat positions in 24 hours time. Everyone will be sailing upwind in the north-westerly wind flowing around a big high pressure centered to their south-west. Race Forecaster, Jennifer Lilly tells us in her latest analysis that this high will dominate the race to the finish. The central point is that the wind will shift to the west and then the south-west as they approach the whale box.

There are three things to balance here: the first is that if you get too far west, too close to the centre of the high pressure, the wind will get a lot lighter – west=bad. The second is that the tactical rule of thumb is to place the boat on the side of the fleet that you expect the wind direction to move towards. If the wind is going from the north-west to the west, then place the boat to the west of the fleet – west=good.

But, as Karl Krahmer pointed out in yesterday’s Comments, it’s about time to start thinking about the Gulf Stream. Karl evidently knows his leebow from his tidal-wind-shift, asking if it would be an advantage to cross the Gulf Stream on starboard tack, thanks to the shift in wind direction provided by a north-easterly flowing current. The theoretical answer is yes (I’m not even going to try to explain why – even a XXX technical content warning wouldn’t cover that one), but the practice is much more difficult than the theory.

To see why, take a look at Jennifer Lilly’s weather report with an explanation and an image of the Gulf Stream. (The earlier .tv clip shows Bouwe Bekking checking just such an image). The biggest single task for the navigators will be finding the favourable current amongst all those swirls and eddies. As Jennifer says, ‘A small course change could make a big difference in terms of favorable versus unfavorable current.’ If you can find the good stuff and also manage to take advantage of the current-shifted wind direction, then you really are playing in the Championship. Unlike Southampton Football Club.

Which brings me neatly to some great Comments in yesterday’s TEN ZULU - Roland gets awarded the position of official TEN ZULU music nerd, coming up with the answers to the Ericsson 4 pop quiz. They were Blue Mink for Sad Fur Coat and The Scarecrows for Field Protectors. Good knowledge, dude. We’ll pass the answers on to the Salter brothers on Ericsson 4, just in case they haven’t figured it out by now, although they might be a little preoccupied at the moment... did I mention that Southampton FC has been relegated?

Karl Krahmer and Erik Bergh both spotted a problem with the Gain/Loss to Leader at Last Report (more catchily known on the leaderboard as DTLC) showing up for Telefonica Blue and Ericsson 4 during yesterday’s StealthPlay. Fortunately, with two boats in Stealth at almost the same time, it wasn’t obvious who the changes referred to – but still, not so stealthy stealth for a while, and a goof up on our part. The software has now been fixed and it shouldn’t happen again ...

Competition time

Getting close to your last chance in the competition – there’s a classic middle distance yacht race whose traditional route almost crosses the track of leg six. If you know the correct name of that venerable yacht race you could win an official Volvo Ocean Race cap and belt.

The first correct answer drawn from the hat by our Chief Duty Officer will be adjudged the winner. Please send your answers to webmaster@volvooceanrace.org. Entries close 23:00 GMT on Friday, 24th April, and the winner will be announced on Saturday, as long as we don’t forget, like last time.

The TEN ZULU will be reporting for duty this weekend, to bring you all the action from what has the makings of another great finish.

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).

Welcome to the TEN ZULU Comments Section. I’ve had my say, now this is where you get to have yours - we want to hear your opinion on who’s fastest, who’s smartest and who’s just plain lucky. But it is fully moderated (so bad language, personal abuse, repetition etc won’t be accepted), and sometimes it might take a while for your words to get cleared - don’t expect them to appear instantly, but we’ll get there eventually ...

www.markchisnell.com

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