| At sea. Volvo Ocean Race: ABN AMRO one marches by Pirates of the Caribbean |
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| Friday, 07 April 2006 | |
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Paul Cayard – skipper: It was a tough day for us on the Black Pearl. We started off the day getting caught under one of those large clouds and parking for an hour. That cost us 5 miles. Then the wind speed and direction were bad for us as we don't have a sail that is fast for those conditions. So we lost quite a few miles over several skeds and it was frustrating. On this most recent sked, we have redeemed our selves against everyone except ABN1, who we can still see just steadily sailing away from us right down the same piece of track. As you know, the sail/inventories are limited, so everyone basically has two masthead gennakers; one for reaching and one for running, and two fractional gennakers; one multi purpose and one for reaching. The reaching one is known as a "Code 0". The Code 0 may be more upwind oriented or more reaching oriented. Ours is more reaching oriented. So as the wind was light and about 60 true wind angle yesterday, we all wanted to put up the largest "upwind oriented" sail we had. That would be the Code 0 and since ours is more reaching oriented; we either had to sail a lower course than we wanted or change to a smaller sail and sail higher but slower. Sometimes it is "Horses for courses" out here with everyone having slightly different sails and each having their "sweet spot" and each inventory having its "holes" or areas that aren't covered so well. These sails are designed knowing the course and how many hours you will sail in all the conditions. You try to build your sails to achieve the best results in the conditions you expect to see most often and accept that you will be weak in some conditions. Of course you alter your course to minimize the damage when you don't have the right sail for the "ideal course". So through our mistake with the cloud and struggling with not having the best sail for the conditions, the fleet gained on us and ABN1 came from a spec on the horizon at sunrise to within 5 miles by mid afternoon. Then when the wind came up to a solid 8 knots, she just started marching on by. Now it is blowing 15 knots and she is just about out of sight. Just back to this report from working on avoiding a cloud. Basically, either Jules or I have to sit in the nav station at night and look for clouds that are raining, by using the radar. If we see one, we have to take bearings on it to see if evasive action is required. Some times the radar is clear and then one of these clouds just starts dumping rain and if it is less than 5 miles away, you have very little time to react. We just bore away about 15 degrees for 30 minutes to dodge this last one. We are moving well now, averaging 15 knots of speed and directly on course for Fernando de Noronha 245 miles away. We will round that island, leaving it to port, around 1900 local time today, April 7th. Then we head for Baltimore which will be about 3600 miles away. It is broken down like this; 500 miles from Noronha to the Doldrums, 1300 more to the Caribbean, 500 miles across the Caribbean, then 1100 miles to Baltimore. We will probably be a ways off the Caribbean Islands unless the Northeast trades are very strong and have a lot of north in them. We will know more about that in the next few days. Right now we are focusing on the Doldrums. They are very active right now, which is hopefully a good sign, as they tend to undulate from larger disturbances to smaller. Active Doldrums means lots of convection, large clouds, squalls and lots of areas without wind. Not pleasant. Maybe when we get there in two days time they will be less active. |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 07 April 2006 ) |
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