Gabriele Olivo/Telefonica Blue/Volvo Ocean Race
That big blob of dark blue hard stuff between them and South Rock is the notorious Spratly Islands. Once they’re done with the Spratlys there’s that ugly weather to worry about
Wednesday 21 January 2009 10:00 GMT
THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 4, DAY 4
By Mark Chisnell
The phony war is over and the boats have been battered by the first real punches – not so much a dance party as pogo-ing in the mosh pit, as some big shifts in wind direction rock in.
It’s the overall leader, Ericsson 4 that is reeling – dumped to the back of the fleet as it gets turned inside out. And it’s not about to get any easier – the fleet have set up with about 60 miles of separation from the west to the east across the race track. Directly ahead of them the South China Sea is littered with uncharted reefs to pinball off and logs to slalom around. There are big black clouds rolling the wind around the compass and the sun is on its way down to the horizon – it’s always easier in the dark, right…?
But at 10:00 ZULU, the fleet still had daylight (just) and in an unreliable north-easterly breeze the front rank of the eastern wing of the fleet – who had focused hard on getting north – were looking good. Telefonica Black had the lead, chased by her sistership, Telefonica Blue. Green Dragon and Delta Lloyd were also out east, but in the second row. Of the three boats positioned more to the west – the early leader of this leg, PUMA, was just about hanging in there, having not gone quite as far that way. Team Ericsson had suffered badly – Ericsson 3 slipping back to fourth from the lead she took overnight, and Ericsson 4, well, you know about Ericsson 4…
After sailing for two and a half days with just a few sail changes to keep them busy, the action started with a tack to starboard at or shortly after the 19:00 GMT Position Report last night. So far, so predictable – the veering (rotating clockwise) wind shift was expected, and we saw the first signs of it just before yesterday’s TEN ZULU. But it was a second big shift that came through around 19:00 ZULU – visible on today’s graph of True Wind Direction (TWD in the Data Centre) – that forced everyone to tack at pretty much the same time.
We said yesterday that any shift in the wind direction that was east of about 43 degrees TWD would favour Ericsson 3. And the TWD graph shows that around the time of this morning’s 01:00 ZULU Position Report it was almost blowing from the south-east – 120 degrees.
The gainer through the early hours was Ericsson 3
So no surprise then that in a spectacularly confused graph of Leg Position (LEG_POSN in the Data Centre), the gainer through the early hours of this morning was Ericsson 3 – led by the oldest skipper in the fleet, Magnus Olsson, and aided and abetted by the youngest navigator, Aksel Magdahl. But according to Magdahl, it’s Olsson’s fingernails that have been bearing the brunt of the tension.
The wind shift to the south-east allowed everyone who got it to sail directly towards South Rock Light – which they have to stay to the east of – bearing about 015 degrees (BRG_WPT in the Data Centre). And while that wind direction held, Ericsson 3 were looking golden.
Unfortunately for the skipper’s fingernails, it didn’t last – the fleet all suffered a backing (rotating anti-clockwise) shift next. The amount of shift has varied – for some it blew from the north for a short time – but mostly it ended up at about north-northeast, or around 25 degrees. So with the course to the waypoint at about 15 degrees, and the wind blowing from around 25 degrees, South Rock was as close to dead upwind as makes no difference.
And this is when the bulk of the leverage opened up – and fates were decided. For a few crucial hours until around 08:00 this morning, it didn’t make much difference what tack you were on as far as the Velocity Made to the Course (VMC in the Data Centre) was concerned. PUMA, Ericsson 3 and Ericsson 4 all went east, while Telefonica Black, Telefonica Blue, Green Dragon and Delta Lloyd got going north at the first opportunity.
Bouwe Bekking doesn’t think we’ve seen the last of the big shifts
You pays your money and you takes your choice - and right now, it looks like Ken Read, Torben Grael and Magnus Olsson should have made the swop too.
We’ve hit an unexpected hole in the satellite coverage, and the data is a mess this morning. So unpicking the detail of Ericsson 4’s loss in the last couple of hours is tough – perhaps we’ll hear from them, perhaps we won’t. But it looks like they’ve just got sucked into the cloud from hell and parked up. Hold your breath – this could be a game changer…
But it’s a long way from over, Bouwe Bekking certainly doesn’t think we’ve seen the last of the big shifts in his most recent email, and nor does Ken Read in his latest missive, in which he also points out that cloud roulette has a new and more dangerous variation for Leg 4.
Read talked about gaining and losing in sailing’s version of a basketball ‘pick’ – wiping a competitor off on an obstruction. That’s why I’ve used the Deckman for Windows for the Predicted Route this morning, as it shows more detail on the chart. And that big blob of dark blue hard stuff between them and South Rock is the already notorious Spratly Islands.
The NOAA weather forecast used for this Predicted Route (same as the one that appears in the Race Viewer) shows enough east in the wind direction for them to just about sail straight at South Rock. And at 10:00 ZULU that wasn’t far off being that case – but that route is taking them straight through the Spratly Islands.
Getting the wrong cloud and the wrong wind shift when you’re going past the wrong piece of real estate will lose you serious miles – and for the sailing savvy, there’s a great new dot tv clip of the fleet’s encounter with the first of these reefs. Hopefully the skippers and navigators have had plenty of sleep for those first couple of days of one-tack torpor, because they aren’t going to get a lot from here on.
And once they’re done with the Spratlys – or should that be, once the Spratlys are done with them – there’s that ugly weather to worry about. It’s still forecast to blow down the South China Sea in 2-3 days time. But it looks like the smart place to be is going to be on the beaches of Luzon, using the protection afforded by the island for flat water and rather less wind. So after all that moaning, the South Rock waypoint may become academic, as they will all want to be east of it after all…
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).
Volvo Ocean Race