To The Doldrums

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Volvo Ocean Race Yachts are slowly approaching the Doldrums, a situation where practically little wind is available. Though the yachts are only 1188 miles away from Cochin, it may take several days to escape from the 300 miles spread doldrums.

“ It is sweat and toil for the navigators. Next stop, quite literally, the Doldrums, 300 miles away. And they are shaping up to be a ”brain teaser””, according to Team Russia’s Wouter Verbraak.

'The Doldrums crossing is going to be a casino: ’ says navigators. The question is do they gamble the lot and squeeze through the narrow gap available or hedge their bets and go around it?

Team Russia’s navigator, Wouter Verbraak reported this morning that they were making a very determined break to the east, to try and go round the worst of the Doldrums, rather than squeeze through a narrow gap. So, someone is going to take it on, to boldly go … and all that. No great surprise that it’s a back marker – Telefonica Blue’s navigator, Simon Fisher expressed in that earlier audio interview said that, two of the top five boats can’t go upwind properly, and a third needs to avoid slamming in waves .

Delta Lloyd’s Navigator Matt Gregory sums up the issue in this way: We have 1,500 miles and 4 races to go. Looking at our track through the ocean on my navigation computer, you’d think that we’re almost to India. But, We have four races left to go on leg 2.

Race 1: The Blast reaching boat speed race. We are currently sailing in 20 knots of east trade winds with our R1 reaching headsail and a reef in the mainsail.

Race 2: The race of patients: The Doldrums. This 300 mile section of ocean east of the Chagos Archipelago is full of pitfalls. Finding a way around local clouds, zephyrs of wind and mostly patients will be the focus of this race. Furthermore finding the shortest route through this section will be key. Like jumping over a stream in the woods, we’ll want to find a good take off and landing point at the narrowest part of the stream. The boats that make the right decisions in this part of the race will make huge gains.

Race 3: The get away and set up for the finish: 600 miles and an equatorial crossing left to go. The boats that get out of the doldrums first will be focused on putting distance on the poor souls that are still stuck without wind ...the ones still wallowing with sails flapping against the rig, in 100 degree heat. Everyone will be eager to get to this section of the race.

Race 4: Onward to the finish; This will be a very scrappy part of the race. The mainland of India will be to our east and there is a great likely hood of storms in this area. The wind gradient will most likely be light for the last 200 miles of the race. Conventional thought would be to head for the coast to pick up sea breeze by day and land breeze by night.

However, with water temperatures in this part of the world are around 90 degrees F (30 C) so there isn’t much potential for wind generation created from land and sea temperature gradients. Who knows how we will get through this part of the race? We don’t