Upside down, inside out

Monday, 8 June 2009 10:00 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 8, DAY 3

By Mark Chisnell

Upside down, inside out and round and round pretty much sums up the last 24 hours as the fleet wrestled its way down the Channel in desperately tricky conditions. The breeze has been spinning around, the tides swinging (it’s Diva day) between low and high, and the leaderboard in a constant state of flux.

Twenty four hours ago, Telefonica Black were last by almost 25 miles, this morning they are neck-and-neck with Green Dragon for the lead, with a good jump over the rest of the pack. It’s been a rollercoaster ride. But we’ll stop the music at 10:00 ZULU this morning and try and nail down some, if not all of the key moments.

At the time of writing, the fleet was sailing east-northeast, upwind on starboard tack. The wind was a ten knot east-southeasterly, the tide was with them, Telefonica Black and Green Dragon had the pack tucked away to the north-west, to leeward, and were enjoying a more favourable wind shift. Make hay while the sun shines, it isn’t going to last...

I’ll start with a technical content warning, so much has happened in 24 hours that today’s ZULU is going to be a tough read. It all kicked off right after the TEN ZULU was filed yesterday morning. I’d suggest you read that one if you haven’t followed the tale thus far – but for those short of time the basic set-up was as follows...

A low pressure system was centred over the south-west of England, to the north of the fleet, with a gradually increasing wind strength to the south, away from the centre. But, the further south you sailed, the more miles you had to go – sailing round the outside of the eastwards turn up the English Channel at Land’s End.

We left the leaders – PUMA and Ericsson 4 – rounding Lizard Point, the rest of the pack sailing across the mouth of Mounts Bay. Green Dragon was positioned to the south, but looking like she wanted to close up with the bulk of the fleet to her north, while the Dragon’s partner in crime down that way, Telefonica Black, was clearly fully committed to the southern option.

The wind died and shifted to blow from the west for the northern group as they rounded Lizard Point. The leaders, PUMA and Ericsson 4 were the worst affected, with the boats that followed them perhaps seeing what was happening and changing to a light wind sail a little earlier - Telefonica Blue and Ericsson 3 taking the best advantage of the situation to lead at 13:00 ZULU.

But the combination of wind shift and drop in strength meant that the whole northern group found themselves sailing with more and more of a northerly component in their course – ‘sucked up’ towards the Cornish coast, as the jargon would have it. And eventually, although Bouwe Bekking didn’t want to, they had to gybe to starboard, to get themselves back into the better breeze lying to their south. And all this while, Green Dragon and Telefonica Black were holding the wind and making good milage to the east on port gybe.

The two groups converged through the early afternoon, coming together about 40 miles east-southeast of Lizard Point at around 15:00 ZULU. Green Dragon’s skipper, Ian Walker, described in yesterday’s audio interview with Nigel Bidmead how they had planned to stay south of the fleet, but edged a little bit too far to the north as they approached Lizard Point. As a consequence, it was Telefonica Black that took the real gains as the fleet turned inside out – as described by Roger Nilson in his email.

The damage to the early leaders is clear from the graph of Distance to Leader (DTL) and Leg Position (LEG_POSN). By 16:00 ZULU Telefonica Black was into the lead, with Green Dragon and Ericsson 3 a couple of miles behind her. The wind was from the west, the course was due east, and the light air downwind gybing duel started in earnest, with Telefonica Black and Green Dragon edging away through the rest of the afternoon.

The tide was flooding eastwards, flowing with them at this point, but the Cherbourg Peninsula was looming large in the windscreen, with its ferocious tides. (I should add that we have included the tide in our Predicted Route calculations, but if you have your own Deckman for Windows software you can go to tidetech.org to download files for Leg 8).

The problem with the Cherbourg Peninsula is that it sticks out into the Channel – peninsulas do that. So all the water from the Baie de Seine has to flush past it on an ebb tide, accelerating the westerly flow along its northern shore, particularly around the Cap de la Hague at the western end. Nevertheless, for the committed and nerveless navigator prepared to put the boat close to the beach/rocks, the shoreline does offer opportunities to find the weaker tide that flows in shallower water. The alternative is a dive out into the middle of the Channel, where the tide is generally weaker away from the accelerated flow around the Peninsula.

By the 22:00 ZULU Position Report the fleet were getting set for a big split, as Telefonica Black and Green Dragon were going east and looking committed to the shore, with Delta Lloyd and Ericsson 3 chasing them in. Meanwhile, the tight group of PUMA, Ericsson 4 and Telefonica Blue were headed offshore – still not letting each other out of sight.

Then the wind intervened – we had been expecting the progressive shift (backing, rotating anti-clockwise) to continue. If you check out today’s graph you can see its progress as it has swung right around the compass, eventually reaching the south-east this morning. But at about 22:00 ZULU last night it chose to take the next little jump from the west to the south-west.

Slowly, Ericsson 4, PUMA and Telefonica Blue on port gybe were forced to sail north, and as the tide built against them, they started going west. No surprise when they gybed to go east instead, but now we had the whole fleet tackling one of the most notorious pieces of water in the Channel - Alderney, the Casquets and the Cherbourg Peninsula – one day off springs in a raging foul tide. As a navigator, it’s like your worst nightmare, yup, even worse than waking up naked in a maths exam.

Needless to say, not a lot of progress was made for the next couple of Position Reports. It’s been a long night – the six hours of foul tide almost coinciding with the limited hours of darkness. Initially, the local boys on Green Dragon got the better of it, sneaking round to the south of Alderney, while Telefonica Black threaded their way to the north. Ian Walker and his team took a narrow lead at 01:00 ZULU, which they battled to defend as they tackled the Cap de la Hague.

Behind them, Ericsson 3 and Delta Lloyd had a torrid time, both of them going backwards for a period after midnight at the Casquets - they’re not the first and they won’t be the last. It was just as bad for the PUMA/Ericsson 4/Telefonica Blue group. They were all struggling with just a six to eight knot south-westerly breeze, and that wasn’t enough to power even a Volvo Open 70 against these legendary five to six knot tidal flows.

Salvation arrived right on the 01:00 ZULU Position Report in the shape of a 15 knot south-westerly wind. It pushed PUMA, Ericsson 4 and Telefonica Blue up to Delta Lloyd and Ericsson 3, who may have had to gybe north to get to it. And slowly the pendulum started to swing back to this group of five, as they closed down on the two leaders. Green Dragon and Telefonica Black had sailed into much lighter wind, hugging the beach to avoid the worst of the tide along the northern edge of the Cherbourg Peninsula.

The blast of south-westerly wind didn’t last for ever, but it got the chasing pack past the worst of the tidal gate. By the 04:00 ZULU Position Report they were just six miles to the north-west of the leaders. That Position Report would have been confirmation for Green Dragon and Telefonica Black that there was more breeze offshore, and it was worth sailing off the beach to find it. They had been edging offshore already, but they made a committed move to the north-east after 04:00 ZULU, and stopped their losses on the leaderboard as a consequence.

The wind was about to continue its shift as well, moving into the south and then the south-east – which helpfully (from their point of view) placed the Dragon and Telefonica Black upwind of the pack. The breeze leveled out at around ten knots as all seven boats finally broke free of the Cherbourg Peninsula. The tide turned in their favour just before 05:00 ZULU, and with the Code Zeroes up they were finally doing some fast miles in the right direction – all of which was recounted from the Dragon’s point of view by Ian Walker.

Phew – tricky enough for you? It’s not going to get any easier. We’ve had a problem with the Predicted Routing this morning, but it should be working for the 10:00 ZULU update. So we’ll go with an image of the boat positions at 07:00 ZULU and the weather at 17:00 ZULU this afternoon.

The wind is going to stay light, and continue to shift to the east (and eventually the north-east), as the fleet sail into the influence of a high pressure system centred off the entrance to the Baltic. The tide will turn against them around 13:00 ZULU, and whether they like it or not, pretty soon the most leeward boats are going to have to tack to avoid the Dover exclusion zone – explained in the race instructions, but not shown on the Race Viewer.

That will enable Green Dragon and Telefonica Black to bank their gains, and they should continue to hold the lead as the fleet tack up the French coast. It looks like they will be tackling the Dover Strait upwind in a foul tide. I’d take naked in a maths exam over that one, too - all to play for, there’s a very long way to go.

A couple of quick ones from the Comments, Rein wanted to know when the fleet might reach the Delta Lloyd Gate Race - anxious that it should be in daylight on Tuesday. Yesterday, I thought that by now they would be approaching the Dover Straits, so perhaps you should find someone else to ask.

Oh dear – well, if they had all gone hard south like the routing suggested, maybe they would now be approaching the Dover Straits... But it does look like it will be sometime during the day on Tuesday at the Gate Race – depends how the Battle of Dover Strait goes tonight.

And finally, to Noel Mannion and all those who have written to say thank you and nice things about the Galway stop-over: Roger Federer may not have been entirely honest yesterday, when he said, ‘I couldn’t have done it without the crowd,’ but we really do mean it – it wouldn’t have been half the craic if no one had turned up. So, thank you, Galway.

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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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