Lobster's revenge

Monday, 18 May 2009 10:00 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 7, DAY 3

By Mark Chisnell

The fleet has gone fishing in the last 24 hours, as the lobsters take revenge for all that New England seafood indulgence. Almost everyone has a tail (geddit?) to tell of hooking up pots and losing miles. Green Dragon was worst hit, giving them and the Volvo Ocean Race Virtual Gamers some serious work to do overnight.

At 10:00 ZULU the lobster thermidor (yup, he grabbed them right out of the surf) had been doled out pretty evenly amongst the leading group, with the top five still together. Ericsson 3, PUMA, Ericsson 4, Telefonica Black and Blue were jammed into a tiny patch of ocean. They really were hunting as a pack, focused on getting east and picking up the points at the scoring gate.

Behind them, Delta Lloyd had slipped to 13 miles back, with Green Dragon suffering from that lobster pot and dropping to just over 20 miles behind – both boats positioning themselves a little further south. So far it has been a full-on, knock-down drag race with some high-speed sailing. But this morning, the breeze started to get flaky, under 10 knots for a while, shifting round to the south-west and then back to the south-east - at least it will feel a little warmer, till they hit the Labrador Current anyway.

We left the fleet just about to round the southern tip of Nova Scotia, with Telefonica Blue and PUMA looking for a wind shift to the south to help them sail round at a fast angle. They didn’t really get it. Both boats ended up going north of Seal Island, before being forced to sail a slightly narrower, slightly slower wind angle to join the fleet rounding south of Cape Sable. It may have cost them their lead.

Or in Telefonica Blue’s case, it might have been the fishing buoy they hooked up. Bouwe Bekking reported from the boat ... “This resulted in a near full stop, and the other boats zipping past us, very frustrating. One got stuck on the daggerboard and the other one on the keel, after half an hour of fiddling we finally got rid of it.” A scene that Rick Deppe was able to watch from PUMA, who got their drag lines off more easily.

Cape Sable was lobster pot central. The Virtual Gamers did tell Green Dragon to stay more than two miles clear of the land at the Cape and they were right, unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. Green Dragon’s skipper, Ian Walker reported yesterday that they hooked three pots up here, and only after clearing two of them did they realize that the third had sawn its way into the carbon fibre of the front edge of the leeward, port daggerboard.

There’s a great .tv clip of all this, including the repair work. But it left the Dragon sailing without a daggerboard for a few hours while they fixed the damage. And that wasn’t fast. By the time the fleet had fully cleared the coast and settled down again (an hour or so after the 13:00 ZULU Position Report), Green Dragon was trailing 12 miles behind the main pack, and it only got worse subsequently, while the boys got sticky and dusty down below.

At Cape Sable there was less than half a mile between the top five, with Delta Lloyd trailing six miles behind. It’s only opened out a tiny bit since then, with some lane shuffling and lots of position changes, as we can see in today’s graph of Distance to Leader (DTL) and Leg Position (LEG_POSN).

Everyone has had the hammer down, fully focused on the points to be gained at the scoring gate (see the Leg Seven Preview for details). The fastest sailing angle and shortest course was taking them towards the point where the gate intersects with the ice exclusion zone – visible on the Race Viewer.

Let’s take a look at the situation with the weather and boats at 07:00 ZULU this morning (Gavin – read, evening), in this image. The overall picture is the same as yesterday, with a low pressure system and cold front stalled over Nova Scotia to their west, and a big high pressure sitting north-east of the ice box, and slowly sinking south. The southerly breeze has been funneling up between these two systems.

As you can see, the expectation was for the boats to sail into lighter breeze as they get closer to the centre of the high pressure. It should also be backing (rotate anti-clockwise) from the south to the south-east. The crews would have been expecting to change to the big sails and maintain plenty of speed eastwards. It might ultimately have meant them tacking to get around the southern end of the ice exclusion zone, but it was the quickest way to the scoring gate.

So I don’t know if it was a shock for the crews, but it certainly was for me, when the wind dropped and went the other way – to the south-west, as you can see in today’s graph of True Wind Direction and True Wind Speed. Fortunately, by 10:00 ZULU it had gone back to the south-east, where it’s supposed to be – check out the latest in the Data Tables.

If we look ahead in this image, we can see the Predicted Route and weather for 24 hours time. Once the fleet have got the points at the scoring gate tomorrow morning, they will indeed have to tack to port to get around the southern end of the ice exclusion zone. That should be when things start to open up tactically; until then, we’re still in drag race mode – albeit in rather different conditions. Light air and upwind? Bring it on for Team Telefonica.

After that, it’s going to be tricky all the way round the ice box, as the high pressure zone slides south in front of them. It looks like they will eventually have to battle their way round to the north of the high to pick up a low pressure system. But once, or if, they get hooked into that low we will be talking serious North Atlantic sailing, big breeze downwind all the way to Galway. It could be a very fast finish.

In yesterday’s Comments, Serega and Rein asked why the tanker entered the harbour during the start. Race Director, Jack Lloyd told us that the agreement with the coastguard and the ship’s pilot was that the tanker would wait until the fleet was out of the harbour. Unfortunately, once the fog came in, they decided it was safer to bring the tanker in immediately, rather than have it stopped outside waiting.

However, the Coastguard representative present with the Race Committee forgot to pass on the message that the tanker had been released. “The first we were aware of the tanker approaching the course area was when she sounded her horn...’ added Jack.

And as to why there was no live .tv streaming for the start: in fact, we haven’t run this at the leg starts since Cape Town. It’s provided just for the in-port racing.

Competition

It’s time for another competition, as we’ve managed to blag a lovely Volvo Ocean Race jacket to give away – as worn by the Volvo Ocean Race team. We’ve got a question that will really test your sailing knowledge, or you ability to use Google anyway. So, which famous yacht and skipper won the 1905 Kaiser’s Cup in the first ever trans-Atlantic yacht race?

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, 22nd May, and the winner will be announced on Saturday.

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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