Telefonica Blue Take The Inside Lane

Tuesday 14 October 2008 10:00:00 GMT

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 1, DAY 4

It's official. It's a Yacht Race.

The last report I checked last night was the 19:00 GMT. And when I stared (bleary eyed) at the Distance to Leader (DTL) on the 04:00 GMT this morning, I thought that the new data hadn't loaded. But no, PUMA were now second and Telefonica Black were third, even if the gap to Ericsson 4 was still just six miles. And look! The gap back to Green Dragon in fifth had changed by a mile!

But don't get the idea that nothing has been happening – two or three times Ericsson 4's advantage has narrowed to just two or three miles. And each time they have clawed it back, only to see it evaporate again in the heat of the African sun. And while the leaders have been pre-occupied with just metres of gain and loss, Telefonica Blue and Delta Lloyd have roared up on the inside.

At 10.00 Zulu, Delta Lloyd were past Team Russia and into sixth, while the Spanish had halved their deficit to the leader (down to just over 50 miles) in the last 24 hours. At the head of the pack, Ericsson 4 were still holding a narrow advantage of a couple of miles to PUMA, with Green Dragon, Telefonica Black and Ericsson 4 in a tight group just three to four miles further back.

Frankly, you couldn't get a fag (cigarette) paper between them.

So how did it all play out yesterday? Well, it looks like most people decided to buy on Monday morning when the stock markets reopened, and the flames of global financial apocalypse are burning a little less brightly today

More wind inshore

And out on the race course? We left the fleet sailing downwind in a light north-easterly breeze, switching from one gybe to the other, looking for any advantage in either wind direction or wind speed. And through yesterday afternoon, Team Russia was positioned to the west of the fleet, with the leading group of Ericsson 4, Telefonica Black, Ericsson 3, PUMA and Green Dragon in the middle, and Delta Lloyd and the chasing Telefonica Blue out to the east-northeast, closer to the coast.

Mostly, the navigators wanted to be on starboard gybe in the light northerly wind, because south-west is the direction to Fernando de Noronha, down the coast of Africa. But it's become ever more evident in the past 24 hours that there is more wind inshore, and to get inshore you have to sail on port gybe.

Have a look at the course of Team Russia on the Race Viewer. Not only have they got keel issues, but they positioned themselves to the north of the fleet. Once they realized that the coast was where the gains were to be made, they decided to swop sides in the early hours of the morning. The gybe was expensive, at right angles to the course, and it's really cost them on the DTL. When they finally gybed back, they were behind Delta Lloyd.

So my assumption that Telefonica Blue would struggle out of the Straits is looking pretty mediocre (note to self: spend more time checking the conditions before pronouncing). And the other half of the Humble Pie is out of the freezer and defrosting for tea break (or smoko as our Aussies cousins would have it, even though I don't smoke, and if I did, the law would require me to stand outside in the gloom to do so).

Fortunately, Telefonica Blue navigator, Simon Fisher had taken the trouble to think about it properly (well, what else has he got to do?), writing as they left Algeciras "All of last night [during their pit stop] I was constantly thinking about the weather, whether or not stopping was the smart thing to do or not and about how much we were going to lose, were my calculation going to be right or not? When I finally woke up, after 6 very good hours of sleep I was pleased to see that on the position report things could have been a whole lot worse ..."

But for the leading group in the middle of the course, it's been more about the tiny gains to be made in the vagaries of the wind, as new waves of pressure (as the sailors call it) roll down in the gradually strengthening breeze - most of the fleet now have 12- 15 knots from the north-northeast.

Aksel Magdahl, navigator aboard Ericsson 3, gave an insight into the close-quarters battle that's been going on, in an email from the boat early this morning. " ... we passed Telefonica Negro a few boat lengths to weather a couple of hours ago. I assume they were not happy about it, so we stayed a bit high since to discourage any passing attempts. When we decided to gybe south later, they gybed on us and we needed another two gybes to shake free."

Nice. These are the kind of moves you'd expect to see in the in-port racing, not in a 6,500 mile leg.

But this dogfight will be hard on Ericsson 4. I can't remember who got asked the question at the navigator's briefing - about whether the first boat out of the Gibraltar Straits would get a jump and win the leg. But whoever answered (and I have a feeling it was Ericsson 4's Jules Salter) reinforced the perception that first out into the open waters and winds of the Atlantic could grab an unbreakable lead.

Horses should be fearful

Ericsson 4 earned themselves that lead, but it turned out to be very fragile. It's all because of the weakness and position of the Azores High. We talked about this in general terms in the Leg 1 Preview and Race Forecaster, Jennifer Lilly talked about the current situation in more detail in today's weather report.

Briefly (and this is going to get unavoidably technical)… the Azores High has been pushed to the west by a series of low pressure systems, and the result has been weaker trade winds. In other words, somebody turned the travellator off, and horses should be fearful.

Jennifer expects the High to reestablish itself and strengthen around 35N/25W – a long way west, and slightly north of the fleet's current position at about 33N/10W. The wind flows clockwise round the centre of a high pressure system in the northern hemisphere, and the fleet is to the right (east) of the strengthening centre of the high.

All of which explains the freshening northerly breeze they have right now. Over the next couple of days, the centre of the high pressure is expected to move north-east and strengthen further. The fleet, meanwhile, will be going south-west. The effect will be that they will move into the bottom right corner, relative to the centre of the high pressure, and will see the wind rotate to the east-northeast and strengthen to the high teens. And that'll be the trade winds - champagne sailing, as the cliché would have it.

But there's plenty for the skippers and navigators to worry about, even if the boys on deck are having fun. Back to Aksel Magdahl, aboard Ericsson 3, for the strategic thinking at this point, "We need to decide on whether to go west of the Canary Islands to get the shift in wind direction, or closer to Africa to look for pressure if there is any. That might involve going between the islands, which provides for interesting navigation with local wind accelerations and risky wind shadows. We also watch the development in the Doldrums, which we will enter in five days time."

We've run the weather routing through Deckman for Windows again this morning and it still thinks the African coast is the place to be, all the way to the Cape Verde Islands (follow the red line, that's the optimum route). But that's because it thinks the narrowest point in the Doldrums will be at about 24W when the fleet get there. Historically, it's been closer to 27-28W – and that's a big difference. When to go west, and how far west, will be the talking point of the next few days