All change

Andy Rice takes a look at the demands of the Doldrums on the overworked Volvo Ocean Race fleet

As the Volvo Ocean fleet moves through the Doldrums, the teams’ varying levels of familiarity with the VO 60 seem to be showing up more than at any point seen so far in the race.
Pre-race favourites illbruck have seen Jonny-come-lately challengers like Grant Dalton’s Amer Sports One match them boat for boat in steady, drag-race conditions, but perhaps John Kostecki’s three years of hard preparation are really paying off when the going gets tough.

And tough is what it has been, by all accounts, as the leading pack battles it way through the Doldrums. "If I come back in my next life as a pair of jeans I know what it will feel like to be put through a warm rinse cycle in the washing machine," said Jamie Gale from onboard illbruck. "We didn't need the navigators to tell us this morning that we had finally reached the Doldrums."

The last few days of frustratingly flat seas and no wind appear to have been the proverbial calm before the storm, albeit with the brief respite of classic trade wind sailing for a day or so. Assa Abloy’s navigator Mark Rudiger put it like this: "I was awakened yesterday morning from a hot muggy sleep with a new violent motion. Assa Abloy was jumping up and down, jerking for and aft, and pitching like crazy. Glancing at the radar, the motion made sense. There were large squall formations all around creating confused seas and radical windshifts."

Rapid sail changes, cloud chasing and no small amount of luck appear to be the ingredients through this tricky stage of the Atlantic. Perhaps it is the illbruck team’s familiarity with their boat that is allowing them to ride their luck better than most. But it is a learning experience for even the most experienced. Jamie Gale comments: "The most interesting thing about sailing in these conditions is that you find all sorts of new ways to trim your sails through the squalls.

"They are generally short enough that often there is not really time to change from the spinnaker, down to the jib or reacher, and then back to the spinnaker once the breeze has moved on. So the temptation is to leave the kite up and run deep when the breeze hits you."

While all hell is breaking loose on deck with frantic sail changes, the navigators are getting back to basics, spending less time gazing at their fancy electronics than resorting to radar and good old eyesight to work out where the clouds are. "This is a hard enough task in day time but it is quite literally pitch black outside so we have to revert to using radar to track them," said Tyco’s Steve Hayles.

"This can help a great deal but it requires the cloud to be raining so that we can see it. Fortunately it is the rain clouds that we are most interested in, as they tend to have the most effect on our local wind."

Marcel van Triest would love to have Hayles’ problems, but the SEB navigator has got all of those and a whole heap more as the Swedish boat yo-yos back down to the wrong end of the leaderboard once more. Gurra Krantz and his boys are still paying the price for that broken headboard that they had to make that pitstop for two weeks ago. Now SEB is faced with a wide chunk of Doldrums to negotiate, perhaps as much as 400 miles compared with the 200 or so miles that illbruck and co appear to have further to the west.

Positions at 1600 hrs 9 October