Becalmed

Frustration on board Geronimo with 1000 miles to go to Yokohama

Becalmed 1000 miles from their destination, the weather is trying the patience of Geronimo's crew…

“Doing this takes a certain level of maturity, and morale isn't at its highest on board Geronimo right now”, explained Olivier de Kersauson in his radio bulletin last night.

After more than 12 days at sea, the Capgemini and Schneider Electric-sponsored trimaran is pressing on with her difficult passage to Yokohama, having covered 4,700 nautical miles since beginning her record attempt in San Francisco. Geronimo's progress has been rather complicated over the last four days. De Kersauson continues: “We're tacking in between 1 and 4 knots of wind in a pretty calm sea and asking ourselves what it would take to find some more wind; but we've had to submit to the conditions - tactics are just impossible. We can't get around this system. The calms stretch 700 miles to the south and to the north the currents are very strong. In this part of the North Pacific, the weather is a bit unstable. There are a lot of small depressions and anticyclones, and some anticyclones can turn into depressions. It's an unbelievable hotchpotch that's caused by the immensity of the Asian continent”.

Nevertheless, this laborious sailing should come to an end within the next 12 hours or so when the wind returns.

The 11-man crew aboard Geronimo still have 1,000 nautical miles to cover before they reach Yokohama. “It could be 700 miles of flat calm, followed by 500 miles of beating against a 9 to 12 knot wind on our nose. And if the simulation is right, 45 knots in the last few hours along the coast, with a risk of thick fog: we daren't allow ourselves to believe it!”.


Navigator Larry Rosenfeld writes from on board:

What amazing changes in the wind from day to day, hour to hour. Yesterday at this time we were ripping along at 25 knots on a perfect reach towards Yokohama. The boat was fantastic to steer and felt like the real multihull that she is. It lasted all of 3 hours and then became headwinds. then no wind and hard rain and finally light winds all night and now no wind. In between low pressure systems there seem to be weak high pressure bubbles that form temporarily to fill in the gaps. One of those is sitting over our head now and giving us light winds from all directions. The forecasts says it will fill in steady from the SE within about 12 hours, but the it seems like an eternity. The trimaran has one advantage over monohulls and cats alike in these conditions. It balances on its main hull and flops from side to side naturally from the waves, using the sails as giant air paddles and the daggerboard and rudder as water paddles. We move along in nearly no air at about 1-2 knots this way, sometimes shifting the battens on the huge mainsail when the little wind there is indicates it's changed sides.

Kazu looked last night for some more information from the Japanese Coast Guard or other sources about the actual speed and direction of the Kuroshio current. We are getting a pretty good picture of it from the US Navy site, but this afternoon he emailed a friend in Japan and got some websites with good info from the Japanese sources that show the core current and its tortured path with some more detail on the strength of the current in places. Its especially complicated compared to our Gulf Stream because of the turn it makes near the southeast corner of Japan just south of Yokohama. As it clears the tip of land, it comes in contact with the cold current from the northwest pushing it out to the east and making a set of meanders or "S" turns (If you're interested see https://www.navo.navy.mil/LIBRARY/Metoc/Pacific+North+-+West+of+180/Regional+NWPAC/SATANAL/OFA/Color+Composite/index.html ). Because the current is running at 2-4 knots it is most important not to be sailing against it for any length of time. One day could mean 50-100 miles difference, Most likely we won't have the chance to sail with the current but its most important to avoid any adverse current or any nasty waves that will slow us down 5-7 knots because of wind against the current. For now we are south of the current, but nearly bumping up against its southern limits whenever we are forced to tack or jibe to the north. There are some real differences between the US and Japanese current models as well. so we have to steer clear of both of them.

I'm learning more French each day, although its still pretty rough. Didier and I can have good discussions now for 20 minutes at a time. But I have to admit we use hand signals as a crutch sometimes. Phone French might be more difficult. Our subject matter is not widely varied. We're not on to politics and religion yet. I am learning some differences between book French and spoken French such as the fact that in spoken French people use for example "un vas au Japan" rather than "nous allons au Japan" as its taught in the books ("One goes to Japan" rather than "We go to Japan"). I'm sure we have such differences in English as well. At least I'm learning about his home and wife and kids and of course we talk about the the weather in more than passing detail.

At the watch change we had a bit of fun. We were up on deck and Philippe who is the watch captain of the watch coming on comes out dressed as a something like a warrior with a stick and banging some pots, a plastic colander and a set of large plastic glasses and goes straight for Didier and pretends to fight and kill him. Didier tumbles into the line locker and everyone gets a good laugh. I asked Philippe the significance behind it all, but he said no reason, just fun. This crew is like that. Good sense of humor and the people truly enjoy each other. Its a really nice ambience on board.

As we move from one area to another we are always getting EGC's (Notices to Mariners from the satcom system). As we've passed into the Asia region we have started to see a number of egc's relating to piracy. Two in the least 24 hours - one a boarding with long knives and holding the captain at knife point. Luckily no one was hurt, and luckily we are 2000 miles north, but its still a reminder that we're running into a different world. Olivier told me the story last year about when an Iranian gunboat boarded them and was about to arrest them in international waters near the Gulf of Hormuz. After some calls to the French Government, it was worked out and they were let go, but it was not a scene he was anxious to repeat.

We seem to have gotten out of the clutches of this high pressure about 10 hours early. Of course, we're thankful for that, it means the latest forecast wasn't quite right. But the high was small and weak so maybe that's why. Its been raining now for a couple hours which is a good sign because it means this is just a fluke wind, but that the high has really moved off and we're now in the SE flow of moist air that's getting sucked into the second depression to the north just coming out of China. These lows just keep on coming about every three days like being shot out of a gun to east and northeast into the Pacific. Its good for us because it means the weather is dynamic and is the reason we planned to go straight through the small high because we calculated that it shouldn't last too long with all this activity around. Olivier remarked that these conditions are some of the most dynamic that he's seen anywhere in the world. (and he's sailed a fair amount in most every part of the world). Even in moderate air as we have now (12 knots) we have 2 or 3 cross seas coming from systems hundreds or thousands of miles away. Like ripples from a number disturbances on a pond, but on a huge scale. It makes for a very bumpy ride, with the whole boat shuddering as it hits a set of waves that have intersected badly, but at least we're moving towards the finish.

We are beginning to feel like Odysseus. Each forecasts tests us more than the previous one. The latest sched which I downloaded since that last paragraph shows fast reaching conditions for the next 12 hours, then beating northward against the wind for 24 hours up to the limit of the current and then another high pressure calm for 12 hours before we get strong (30-35 knots) favorable SE and South winds from yet another fast moving depression coming out of Yellow Sea between China and Korea. But if we are a little slow and the depression moves a little quicker than the forecast, we will be rewarded with beating against 35 knots against across the current starting mid-day on the 27th UTC (28th midnight Japan time). Normally 900 miles (about the distance from Miami to New York) would be less than two days for us, but not so with this forecast. We'll be lucky to make it in 3 1/2 days. So now as the sun sets, we are moving as fast as we can at 23 knots to the west, hoping to make it in before the winds and seas turn nasty and against us. It truly is a race against the weather for these last 900 miles.

We're back on the express route at least for now.

Larry