Gale force winds to hit GOR fleet soon

I will certainly remember leg five of the Global Ocean Race as the one
where time expanded, we’re not even half way and i feel like i’ve been on
this boat for 9 consecutive months. Perhaps the anticipation for the
imminent finish of the whole race plays tricks with my mind or perhaps
it’s simply because we had some of the most frustrating weather of any
leg…

After leading the early days of this leg we were as predicted overtaken by
Cessna. We managed to keep quite close to them for some time until we very
quickly lost lots of ground. We seemed to get stuck in a never ending
sequence of twists and turns in the weather that slowed us down
considerably, at first we were further south and we found lighter winds,
further north we indeed found better winds but also an eddie of the Gulf
Stream and sailed nearly 36 hours in an adverse current that peaked at 2
and half knots and probably cost us well over 50 miles to everyone else
who still enjoyed a favourable current.

Then, as soon as the wind veered to the north Cessna literally took off at
their strongest point of sail… We watched them burn the miles and
disappear off the screen as our eyes started to focus on a different
problem. There’s a very deep depression forming to the west of us which
will hit us in a day with some very strong winds. In fact the weather
model shows we’ll see at least 40 knots of wind but things could get quite
nasty as the depression will continue deepening as it travels east.

Once more my focus shifted away from the race and towards our safety and
that of the boat. Whatever position we finish in this leg we will secure
2nd place in the overall points ranking, but if we do not finish we could
hand our 2nd place over to Phesheya. In other words, strictly speaking,
our goal is simply to finish this leg. The boats are tired and frankly so
am I, so we took the foot off the gas and instead of launching on a rather
pointless chase of Cessna we actually decided to lose ground to the south
and slow down so that we’ll avoid the worst of the gale force winds by
letting the depression overtake us before it deepens and strengthens. The
miles deficit to Cessna has grown very rapidly but we tried to not let it
bother us too much.

I appreaciate this doesn’t sound very heroic but from a cold blooded
tactical point of view this is the best choice, nurse the boat as if she
was made of crystal all the way to Les Sables and enjoy the celebrations
of a round-the-world-race second place rather than take any unnecessary
risks with little or no upside. In fact for us to finish first overall it
would take for Cessna to retire from this leg, simply beating them to the
finish line would make no difference on points.

We are now moving further south and as soon as the depression will pass
over our heads in 24 hours we’ll start running towards les sables, we
should have 2 days of very strong following winds and clock some fast
miles, hopefully we’ll get through without breaking anything…

Posted by: firstclass