Near mist!

Sunday, 17 May 2009 10:00 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 7, DAY 2

By Mark Chisnell

It’s been a taut tale of near misses and unseen hazards in the fog overnight. The Volvo Ocean Race fleet has been dodging container ships, lobster pots, powerboats and, for all we know angels and demons, (well, you would too, if you followed the link to that review) in a gremlin-filled opening 12 hours of leg seven.

At 10:00 ZULU this morning, PUMA was dueling with Telefonica Blue for the lead, but with just seven miles from the front to the back of the pack. The fleet was blasting east towards Nova Scotia, clear of the whale exclusion zone and powered by a 20 knot south-southeasterly. The Ericsson boats were south of the lead pair, sailing together, with Green Dragon and Delta Lloyd to their west, and Telefonica Black to their south.

Before we look at the action, I should point out that amongst the gremlins besetting us to date was a problem with the synchronised timing of the Position Reports. So for boats that were close together, the order on the leaderboard wasn’t necessarily reflecting that on the water. But since no one could see too much in the fog and subsequent darkness anyway, we may never know who was actually leading down the north-west side of the whale box.

The problem looks to have been fixed from 04:00 ZULU onwards, by which time the fleet were all out into the Atlantic. So there’s not too much I can say about events immediately after the live re-start blog left off. The events in the harbour prior to and immediately after that were featured heavily in the early emails from the boats, in particular, check out Gustav Morin’s description of Ericsson 3’s bold mark rounding, right in front of the tanker.

Ericsson 3 left Delta Lloyd to go behind the ship and, I suspect, a somewhat miffed tanker captain. It all sounded rather like a Cowes Week start, what with the fog, the cold, and the random intervention of shipping. I guess that’s why they called it New England. Personally, I’d have kept going south until I found somewhere I could call New Galicia.

The best description of what happened once they got clear of the harbour came from navigator Roger Nilson on Telefonica Black. At one point they had one metre of water under the keel, in thick fog. Not good for anyone’s blood pressure. But they subsequently lost a good position when the seal around the keel started leaking – now repaired.

The fog was a function of the warmer southerly wind, blowing over the cold water coming down from the Arctic. This is as it ever was, but these days GPS, radar and a bunch of sophisticated electronics make navigation a lot safer. But not completely safe, as Ian Walker reported ... “Radar doesn't help much with lobster pots though, so we will need a bit of Irish luck to help out there. Neal (McDonald) had to avoid 15 lobster pots in the first 20 minutes of his shift steering earlier today which doesn't bode well for tonight.”

But the navigators’ toys can help with the tactical sailing necessary in a tight fleet, as Aksel Magdahl related. “The fog is thick. We had Magnus in the bow looking for crossing boats sailing out of the channel. At one stage we were in the wind shadow of another boat without being able to see it. So we keep a constant radar watch.” However, the scariest experience we’ve heard about so far has been Telefonica Blue’s close call with a powerboat that Bouwe Bekking described in this email.

With everyone now out into the Atlantic and daylight on its way, things should be settling down, as the fleet head for Nova Scotia. If you haven’t heard already, Green Dragon will be receiving advice from the Virtual Volvo Ocean Race Game players, as a consequence of a sponsorship announced in Boston. And the latest question to the gamers from Ian Moore (navigator on the Dragon) was about the course that they should sail towards the Canadian province.

The southern tip of Nova Scotia was bearing 160 miles at 105 degrees from the top corner of the whale box, with a wind shift to the south expected. When I checked at about 07:00 ZULU, almost 70% of the gamers were voting for a course of 095 degrees – straight at the rocks.

To explain why, we’ll need a technical content warning. It’s another of those wind angle things. The suggested course of 095 (HDG) in a 20 knot wind (TWS) blowing from about 155 degrees (TWD) would give us a wind angle (TWA) of 60 degrees. If you click on the Form Guide tab in the Data Centre, set the Wind Speed (TWA) to 20 knots, then you’ll find that sailing at 80 degrees is a whole lot faster than sailing at 60 degrees. So the wider the wind angle, the faster the boat goes – but you are relying on the wind shift to the south arriving, to allow you to maintain the wide, fast sailing angle... and avoid contact with Nova Scotia.

If you check the Race Viewer, you’ll see that almost the whole fleet was following this strategy to some degree. Aiming north of the southern tip of Nova Scotia, once they cleared the whale box. Telefonica Blue and PUMA were really gunning for it, relying on the expected wind shift to get them round the land.

Meanwhile, aboard Telefonica Black, Nilson wasn’t giving the weather forecast as much weight, holding a more southerly course. This was playing out as we went to press, with the wind steadily shifting to the south, and the fleet slowly adjusting course until they were almost clearing the headland.

The other gremlin had got at the Predicted Routes overnight, which seem to think that north of Newfoundland should be an available option. The team was working on it as I write this, so hopefully it will be back soon. But this morning, we’ll be going old school and just looking at the weather. In fact, most of the next 24 hours should be relatively straight forward, but the wind will start to ease and it’ll be getting complicated by this time tomorrow morning.

If you have a look at this image, it shows the race course and fleet at 07:00 ZULU, and the weather at 11:00 ZULU. And you can see that the wind was forecast to go round to the south. To the west, behind the fleet, was a low pressure system and cold front. While to the east, sitting over the ice exclusion zone (see the Leg 7 Preview for details) was a big high pressure. In between these two systems was the southerly breeze that the fleet were sailing in this morning. And in theory, the movement of the boats relative to the weather systems should allow them to stay in that southerly through to tomorrow morning, and put some fast, direct miles under their belts.

All right, one from the Comments during the Boston stopover. In my Leg 7 preview, Gavin Cooke was accusing me of time-ism, because I always refer to the TEN ZULU as being in the morning. There’s a good reason for that – it kind of is in the morning. Race Management uses the ZULU (also known as GMT/UTC) time zone for everything it does, be it sending out Position Reports or weather forecasts, wherever the boats are in the world. It removes any potential confusion, so everybody knows what to expect and when.

As a consequence, the boats also run their onboard clocks on GMT, no matter what ocean they are in. So when they’re in the Pacific, they’re watching the sunset at 06:00, and eating dinner while they do it. Consequently, as far as the race is concerned, the TEN ZULU is always in the morning, tied as it is to the 10:00 GMT Position Report. And really, it couldn’t be any different – what other time zone would I pick?

So generally, if I refer to time I mean ZULU/GMT/UTC. When I’ve needed to refer to the local time, for instance in the development of a sea breeze or land breeze, I tried to make the reference clear. But I guess I didn’t entirely succeed, so apologies Gavin – not guilty of time-ism, but guilty of a lack of clarity? More than likely ...

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 ...

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