{"id":237,"date":"2012-02-23T09:46:57","date_gmt":"2012-02-23T09:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/?p=237"},"modified":"2012-02-23T09:46:57","modified_gmt":"2012-02-23T09:46:57","slug":"horns-of-a-dilemma-approaching-the-horn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/horns-of-a-dilemma-approaching-the-horn\/","title":{"rendered":"Horns of a Dilemma approaching the Horn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our moment of glory as leaders of the Global Ocean Race was short-lived,
\nas predicted the reaching conditions favoured the newer more powerful
\nCessna who simply pulled away averaging 1-2 knots faster despite our every
\neffort to bear away and sail as fast as possible. Now finally the wind has
\nturned round and we are sailing downwind but unfortunately we are paying
\nthe price of our torn masthead spinnaker so again we are losing ground,
\nwe’ll need a bit of luck after the horn for a chance to catch up again.<\/p>\n

Today however my thoughts are far more preoccupied with something else,
\nthere’s a storm brewing due to be sweep across Cape Horn exactly at the
\nsame time as we expect to go round. The centre of a deep depression
\nwould be centred in the middle of Drake Passage with very strong
\nsouth-south-esterly winds blowing at the horn. The weather files show
\nsustained winds of around 40 knots due in 48 hours but the reality is that
\nwe should expect far more than this, after the cold front the unstable air
\nmass could mean winds gusting 60-70 knots or more. We would need to stay
\noff the continental shelf to avoid the worst of the steep waves that form
\nwhere the sea bed rises sharply, much the same way as in the Bay of
\nBiscay, unsurprisingly another nasty place in bad weather. Given the wind
\ndirection it would be easy to be pushed over the shelf and find ourselves
\nstruggling to keep away from land and unable to ride the storm with no
\nspace to run downwind.<\/p>\n

Even now with a forcast 15 knots we already have 20 gusting up to 26 and
\ntypically grib weather files underestimate extreme weather so it is a bit
\nof a lottery to know exactly what we would be in for.<\/p>\n

Serious weather would be certainly frightening, possibly not life
\nthreatening but undoubtedly the risk of damage would be high. An option
\nwould be to slow down or even stop for a while to ensure the low pressure
\nsystem displaces to the east of us so that once we resume our course we
\nwill know the weather is on it’s way to improve rather than taking the
\nrisk of being cornered and trapped with no easy way out.<\/p>\n

We have to make a decision within the next 12 hours otherwise we will have
\ngone to far to avoid the worst that is forecast to come. Deciding to stop
\nwould cost us around 24 hours, certainly not an easy decision to take but
\nhaving come so far we really need to ensure we can finish this race. We
\nwill review our options tomorrow after the new weather data is available.<\/p>\n

My boat was raced as Mowgli in the previous edition of the Global Ocean
\nRace and I think they were caught in very strong winds and seas in the
\nsecond leg of the race, the waves breaking over the back of the boat
\nwhilst<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Our moment of glory as leaders of the Global Ocean Race was short-lived, as predicted the reaching conditions favoured the newer more powerful Cessna who simply pulled away averaging 1-2 knots faster despite our every effort to bear away and sail as fast as possible. Now finally the wind has turned round and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-ocean-race"],"views":2522,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}