Volvo Ocean Race, tutti nello stretto

[singlepic=1152,320,240,,left]Volvo Ocean Race – Cochin – Con il passaggio di Team Delta Lloyd attraverso il cancello di Palau We tutti i VOR 70 protagonisti della Volvo Ocean Race hanno fatto il loro ingresso nello Stretto di Malacca e fanno prua alla volta di Singapore, lontana per i primi meno di quattrocento miglia.

A guidare la flotta è sempre Ericsson 4 che, dopo un’ultima puntata a nord, naviga verso est-sudest con passo spedito e guadagna terreno sugli inseguitori, impegnati in un duello ravvicinato per la conquista della piazza d’onore. Ericsson 3, Telefonica Blue e Il Mostro, infatti, sono a poco più di trenta miglia dal leader, radunati in un fazzoletto di mare, anche se Ken Read e Bouwe Bekking hanno scelto una rotta molto più settentrionale rispetto a quella seguita da Anders Lewander.

Nelle prossime ore si capirà come i navigatori intendono affrontare questo difficile passaggio. Le opzioni sono due: o lungo la costa est, dove in questo momento pare esserci più aria, o lungo la costa ovest. Una scelta difficile, anche perchè man mano che si scenderà verso Singapore, oltre a doversi guardare dal pericolo pirato e dalla nevi in transito, si comincerà a sentire l’influenza delle calme equatoriali che, scontrandosi con i sistemi meteo generati dai Monsoni, creerà una notevole instabilità.

Leg 3, day 7, 10.00 GMT, rankings
1 – Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) DTF 390 nm
2 – Ericsson 3 SWE (Anders Lewander/SWE) +31 nm
3 – Telefónica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) +32 nm
4 – Puma Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) +35 nm
5 – Telefónica Black ESP (Fernando Echávarri/ESP) +53 nm
6 – Green Dragon IRL/CHN (Ian Walker/GBR) +58 nm
7 – Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) +97 nm
8 – Team Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) +202 nm

Per seguire la regata sul Race Tracker clicca qui.

KEEPING IN TIGHT
[Volvo Ocean Race Press Release] Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, said Sun-tzu, and that seemed to be the philosophy of the Volvo Ocean Race fleet as they sailed into the Strait of Malacca – everyone playing the short game, keeping the leverage down, and trying to win the close up battles.

And for a while, it was working – only one change on the leaderboard through to 07.00 GMT, despite an immense effort expended as the fleet tacked and stacked their way through the scoring gate and into the home Strait, before setting off on the assault course so eloquently described by Guy Salter yesterday afternoon. But one man’s series of unwanted challenges is another man’s opportunity, as Team Russia’s navigator, Wouter Verbraak, pointed out.

At 10.00 Zulu, while Torben Grael and Ericsson 4 still had the fleet firmly under control, just over 30 miles behind them, it was game on for the rest. Bouwe Bekking and Telefonica Blue had dropped back to third, behind Ericsson 3 and in the sights of fourth placed Puma. It’s starting to get flaky, and the nerves were starting to jangle.

Everyone was on port tack in a moderate east-north-easterly True Wind Direction (TWD in the Data Centre), forcing the fleet to keep sailing upwind. Just as we left them, in fact, on port tack with the scoring gate in their sights, and the idea that the boats positioned to the north would have a chance to make some gains.If we look at today’s graph of Distance to Leader (DTL), we can see that up to the 22.00 Zulu Position Report yesterday (just before Team Russia went through the scoring gate), the most northern boat, Team Russia, closed the gap on everyone. Green Dragon got to within a handful of miles of Telefonica Black in the same period, and both Puma and Ericsson 3 closed on Telefonica Blue – you can read the account of how the points were allocated in the morning report.

But the southern boats picked up a get out of jail for free card, with a final veering (rotating clockwise) shift in the TWD as they approached the land. While it was too little and far too late for the boys in blue in their battle with Ericsson 4, it did force the whole fleet to tack to starboard to get around the island of Pulau We. That gave the southern boats a good angle on starboard tack to close down the leverage to their opponents to the north, and kept the game tight.

Puma were just three miles behind Ericsson 3 as they closed the land, and Gustav Morin, the Media Crew Member aboard the latter, provided a vivid description of how they just managed to hold off the rampaging cat at the line (along with a slightly too vivid description of his illness, a little more information than we needed, but at least he’s smiling again).

Puma used the wind shift to sail past the hapless Lewander
Yesterday, we looked at two possible scenarios once they got into the Strait, one of which was the wind shifting to blow from the east. We’ve already seen how that shift occurred as they approached the scoring gate – it’s a fundamental axiom of Murphy’s Law that every time you get to a headland in a coastal race, the wind will shift to ensure you have to keep sailing upwind. But in this case, the Law favoured Ken Read and Puma, as it kept the passing lanes open.

Once they were through the gate, Puma chased Ericsson 3 on starboard tack to the north-east. But the fact that Singapore was to the south-east was obviously worrying Anders Lewander, who finally tacked Ericsson 3 away first, back towards the land and the finish. Read held on just a little longer, only another 15 minutes, but it made all the difference.

A couple of hours later (just on the 22.00 Zulu Position Report), Read found a slant of north-easterly breeze that didn’t travel the four miles further south to where Ericsson 3 was positioned, and used the wind shift to simply sail past the hapless Lewander and his team (visible on the Race Viewer, due East of Pulau We) – much to the chagrin of Gustav Morin. It should have been a warning to everyone, there are some big pot holes in the road out there.

But what goes around, comes around, and over the past few hours, the biggest hole seems to be anywhere inshore on the island of Sumatra, which is unfortunate, as it’s directly between the fleet and where they want to go. It looks like the wind out in the middle of the Straits, on the line that Ericsson 4 has taken, is an east-northeasterly TWD, blowing at a True Wind Speed (TWS) in the low teens. But closer to the coast, it’s pretty ugly, and everyone who has ventured in there has tacked to escape it as fast as possible.

Worst hit has been Telefonica Blue, who got badly stuck under a cloud – as Bouwe Bekking related here. They managed to wrestle their way free just before the 07.00 Zulu Position Report – but took a hit of almost 20 miles to Ericsson 4, who dodged the bullet by heading up and away from the coast as the wind started to get fluffy. Once bitten, twice shy, and Bekking’s starboard tack took him well away from the land – which has allowed Puma to close, and Ericsson 3 to sneak through into second place on the inshore route. Whether Lewander and his team will have to pay for getting that close to the land remains to be seen …

Singapore is eight hours ahead of Zulu report time, so at 10.00 Zulu it’s 18.00 local time, and the sun is setting. So the land is starting to cool relative to the water, and we’re into the transition periods for our old friends the sea breeze and the land breeze – that’s the cause of the clouds and the pot holes close to the beach.

The east-northeasterly gradient wind in the middle of the channel appears the better bet at the moment – which is the north-east monsoon finding its way over the Malaysian peninsula. If we look at today’s Race Viewer image the short-term forecast is for this east-northeasterly TWD holding through the next 12 hours. That will get them most of the way down to Kuala Lumpur, where we encounter the first of the Race Office’s Malacca Strait waypoints and the start of the traffic separation zone.

This is where the hard choices will have to be made, as the gradient dies, the fleet will find their room for manoeuvre constrained by the Race Office’s requirement to stay north of the waypoints, and obey the shipping regulations. Combined with the fact that the tide will only get stronger the further east they go, and I think that by this time tomorrow we will find everyone headed for the beaches of Malaysia, and we’ll be into the real Straits action.

Leg 3, day 7, 10.00 GMT, rankings
1 – Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) DTF 390 nm
2 – Ericsson 3 SWE (Anders Lewander/SWE) +31 nm
3 – Telefónica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) +32 nm
4 – Puma Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) +35 nm
5 – Telefónica Black ESP (Fernando Echávarri/ESP) +53 nm
6 – Green Dragon IRL/CHN (Ian Walker/GBR) +58 nm
7 – Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) +97 nm
8 – Team Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) +202 nm

To follow the race on Race Tracker click here.

To visit the video gellery click here.

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