{"id":321,"date":"2012-05-29T10:51:30","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T10:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/?p=321"},"modified":"2015-03-31T14:46:15","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T14:46:15","slug":"fale-force-winds-to-hit-gor-fleet-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/fale-force-winds-to-hit-gor-fleet-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Gale force winds to hit GOR fleet soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I will certainly remember leg five of the Global Ocean Race as the one
\nwhere time expanded, we’re not even half way and i feel like i’ve been on
\nthis boat for 9 consecutive months. Perhaps the anticipation for the
\nimminent finish of the whole race plays tricks with my mind or perhaps
\nit’s simply because we had some of the most frustrating weather of any
\nleg…<\/p>\n

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

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

Once more my focus shifted away from the race and towards our safety and
\nthat of the boat. Whatever position we finish in this leg we will secure
\n2nd place in the overall points ranking, but if we do not finish we could
\nhand our 2nd place over to Phesheya. In other words, strictly speaking,
\nour goal is simply to finish this leg. The boats are tired and frankly so
\nam I, so we took the foot off the gas and instead of launching on a rather
\npointless chase of Cessna we actually decided to lose ground to the south
\nand slow down so that we’ll avoid the worst of the gale force winds by
\nletting the depression overtake us before it deepens and strengthens. The
\nmiles deficit to Cessna has grown very rapidly but we tried to not let it
\nbother us too much.<\/p>\n

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

We are now moving further south and as soon as the depression will pass
\nover our heads in 24 hours we’ll start running towards les sables, we
\nshould have 2 days of very strong following winds and clock some fast
\nmiles, hopefully we’ll get through without breaking anything…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/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-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-ocean-race"],"views":3114,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","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=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1697,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/1697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstclasssailing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}