Gone in 30 seconds

Tuesday 19 May 2009 10:00 GMT

 THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 7, DAY 4

By Mark Chisnell

In less time than it takes to boost a Shelby Mustang GT 500, Telefonica Blue snatched the prize from PUMA – thirty seconds separated the boats at the Leg 7 scoring gate. Another precious half point in the battle for second overall for Bouwe Bekking, and another nearly-but-not-quite-top-step podium place for Ken Read and his men.

The drama played out in the darkness of the frozen north, as the pair battled side by side for the final hours. Ericsson 4 had edged to the south a little, and followed them across 20 minutes later. Ericsson 3 was another 30 minutes behind, holding the same advantage over Telefonica Black in fifth. Delta Lloyd crossed the line sixth, while Green Dragon was ignoring the gate for the sake of the next battle – but will pick up points for seventh at some stage.

Driving hard and fast for the line of longitude 52 degrees 38 minutes west, the leading pair crossed the gate just a mile from its intersection with the ice exclusion zone. And as soon as they were across the line, the two crews started frantically restacking the sails and gear so they could tack to port and escape a foul. Only once they were headed south, did the cost of the dash for cash become clear. First Ericsson 4 crossed clean in front, then Telefonica Black, then Delta Lloyd and finally ... PUMA and Telefonica Blue did just scrape ahead of Green Dragon, but not by much.

At 10:00 ZULU the fleet was racing for the south-west corner of the ice exclusion zone. The wind speed was in the mid-teens and blowing from the south-east, which made the corner of the ice box a little less than 100 miles away and almost dead upwind. Telefonica Black had the lead, with the rest of the fleet tucked away nicely to the west and north of her.

(Ton Franken pointed out in the Comments in yesterday’s TEN ZULU that it looks on the Race Viewer as though the leaders entered the exclusion zone – they didn’t, this is just the way it’s been plotted on the map projection, as Ton suggested - see right for the Race Management view).

Since Leg 2, I’ve been waffling on about the strategists trying to balance the points to be gained at the scoring gate, versus the potential longer term advantages of not worrying about them, and sailing the optimal route to the finish. But everyone has sailed hard at the gates right to the bitter end anyway – until now.

Yesterday morning, around the time the TEN ZULU was posted, Green Dragon’s skipper, Ian Walker asked the Virtual Gamers if Green Dragon should sail straight for the corner of the ice box. “Our dilemma right now is whether to head up straight at the mark ... or whether to sail faster and low of the mark and spend more time on port later. As we are currently last we do not have to put the scoring gate into our game plan. This could be our opportunity to make a break from the fleet – the question is will it pay?”

The answers, when I last checked, were pretty evenly split, with a small margin in favour of sailing straight at the scoring gate. But through the day it slowly became clear what Walker and his navigator, Ian Moore, were thinking. And they weren’t the only ones, the courses of Telefonica Black, Delta Lloyd and Green Dragon all started to diverge to the south, away from the lead pack of four, and towards the corner of the ice box. None of these three had much chance of catching the boat in front, and none of them were threatened by a pass – a perfect storm of tactical opportunity.

If you look at the tracks in the Race Viewer of these three over the last 24 hours, you’ll see how they waver with the wind shifts. That indicates that they were sailing upwind, and going where the wind took them, in contrast to the front four boats, who were sailing straight and fast for the scoring gate.

Roger Nilson wrote from Telefonica Black this morning, "We decided yesterday not to focus on the scoring gate, instead focus on the south-west corner of the ice box. If the wind direction does not change too much, it is a possibility that the four leading boats to the north could be behind us after we are forced to tack ..."

If any further confirmation were needed, there’s a cool .tv clip of Jules Salter, navigator on Ericsson 4, and Ian Walker on Green Dragon talking about it. While Delta Lloyd navigator Wouter Verbraak discusses the problem in this email.

We know how it played out. The need for speed in the chase to the scoring gate forced the lead boats to sail a wide, fast wind angle, giving up too much distance to windward. So once they crossed the gate, started to sail upwind and tacked to port, the three that had been going upwind for much of the previous day had gained enough distance to the south to make the pass stick.

The overtaking moves are neatly encapsulated in today’s graph of Distance to Leader and Leg Position, although it does Green Dragon a disservice in the calculation because she hadn’t crossed the scoring gate – now hopefully fixed.

(Those of a more technical inclination might note that it would have been even worse for the leaders at the gate if the wind hadn’t continued to back (rotate anti-clockwise) towards the east, as we can see in today’s graph of True Wind Direction (TWD) and True Wind Speed (TWS).)

Everyone is now faced with a 100 mile upwind slog to the corner of the ice box in some tough conditions. Anyone who watched the Shipping News and thought Newfoundland a pretty grim place, would not have been disappointed by yesterday’s .tv clip from Telefonica Blue.

Fortunately it’s got a little warmer overnight as they started to hit the first swirls of the Gulf Stream – check out the Sea Temperature (SEA_TEMP) in the Data Centre. The latest analysis from Race Forecaster, Jennifer Lilly shows a sea temperature map, and you can track the flow of both the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current in that image (very similar to the ones you see in the .tv clip of Salter and Walker).

The next 24 hours is going to be all about threading their way through the shifting breeze and swirling currents to get round the ice exclusion zone. The high pressure (now centred just north of the north-east corner of the ice box) that has been dominating the weather for the past couple of days is still forecast to slide south. The effect of that should be to rotate the wind from the south-east, back to the south. And that ought to benefit boats to the south-west, over boats to the north-east – which is probably why everyone is now on port tack, headed south.

Once they get to the south-west corner, it will be a reach along the southern edge of the ice exclusion zone, which is where we will find them tomorrow morning. We can see from today’s Predicted Route image showing the boat positions and weather in three days time that it will get more complicated once they clear the south-east corner of the ice box.

It will be a race downwind to get north around the edge of the high pressure to pick up that big low pressure system that you can see whisking them to Galway in the top right-hand corner of the image. So we have a bit of everything coming up – medium air upwind and reaching round the ice box, then a steadily increasing breeze to take them home downwind. Team Telefonica should shine in the first part, but can they build a big enough lead to hold off the Ericsson boats once they start blasting downwind?

Either way, as PUMA’s Shannon Falcone pointed out in his interview with Rick Deppe yesterday, it’s going to be over quick. We know this, because there’re only four bags of food to move around when they stack the boat.

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 your 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 Thursday, 21 May – Neil O'Leary asked how many times he could enter. Only once, Neil, so give it your best shot. The winner will be announced on Friday. And I suspect we will not have to wait much longer to find out the winner of leg seven.

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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