The Doldrums dilemma

Volvo Ocean Race fleet spreads out to tackle next meteorological hurdle

Tuesday November 25th 2008, Author: James Boyd, Location: United Kingdom

Image above courtesy of Expedition and Predict Wind

Positions at 0655 GMT

Pos	Boat	Skipper	Lat	Long	24 hr	DTF	DTL
1	Ericsson 4	Torben Grael	09.11.39S	074.43.11E	397	1152.4
2	Ericsson 3	Anders Lewander	09.16.100S	074.45.29E	398	1157.8	5.4
3	Puma	Ken Read	09.28.14S	074.17.66E	412	1171.2	18.8
4	Green Dragon	Ian Walker	09.37.35S	074.33.49E	433	1178.1	25.7
5	Telefonica Blue	Bouwe Bekking	09.36.56S	073.34.35E	408	1184.4	32
6	Telefonica Black	Fernando Echavarri	10.45.17S	072.41.07E	389	1260	107.6
7	Delta Lloyd	Ger O'Rourke	11.14.85S	074.41.35E	457	1275.6	123.2
8	Team Russia	Andreas Hanakamp	11.52.100S	075.39.64E	437	1311.1	158.7

This morning finds the Volvo Ocean Race fleet still some 550 miles from the Equator in the middle of what should be the southern band of Doldrums. As the satellite image below shows the boats have neatly skirted an area of Doldrums to their west but their progress is still good, although the boats trailing are in better pressure - around 15-17 knots compared to 11-13 for the leaders, which equates to 11-13 knots boat speed for those up front to up to 16 for Delta Lloyd.

However over the last 24 hours it appears that the boats are developing their own strategies for crossing the Doldrums. The Ericssons are still locked in battle, just 5 miles apart in the middle of the race track while Telefonica Black have forked off to the west (at present they are heading directly for the Chagos Archipelago) while Team Russia are taking the most easterly route. The span across the race track is now around 180 miles. While the boats are currently still in southeasterlies, they are dying out for the frontrunners who will have to tackle a light patch before the new breeze fills in from the west at around 5°N (ie around 200 miles away). Expect a slow day today and the results of this particular roll of the dice by Thursday.

Yesterday Ian Walker reported from Green Dragon: “I’d love to tell you that today is very different from yesterday, but it is not. We are still blast reaching at about 20 knots across the southeast trade winds. The important thing is, we are making good time as we are approaching the part of the trip where the crew demand to know how far it is to go more and more - before long it will have to be on every electronic display on deck.

“The fleet is lining up for the Doldrums which are just over a day away with Ericsson 4 seemingly having a change of heart and diving north for a more direct crossing near Diego Garcia. The Telefónicas are out west with Puma in the middle near the Ericsson boats. The Dragon is holding the eastern flank while Delta Lloyd and Team Russia are further to the east behind. It is not too late to change your minds and this is what we are trying to decide now. To be honest, everyone looks to be heading for near enough the same area, which, I guess, is no surprise as we are all looking at the same weather files with the same software. Going direct is very appealing but with such a tight race even a few hours of no wind could make the difference between 1st and 5th. You play poker with the doldrums at your peril!”

Despite having the boom still broken down below, the Dragon is managing to sail at an impressive speed. Ian Moore says this is a whole new experience for all the crew. “We’re having to sort of learn to sail again. There are four or five different sheet attached to the corner of the sails to get the different angle that you normally get with just the boom and a main sheet. We’re not sailing as fast as we would do if we had the boom but we’re giving everything we possibly can do.”

On the continuing debate on whether or not to repair the broken boom, Navigator, Moore explained the pros and cons: “It would be fantastic to have a boom but if we do repair it, how strong is it going to really be, would we be able to use it to its full effect. If we commit all those time and resources to repairing the boom, will we actually get the benefits from it. At the same time if we do the repair, we going to have to cannibalise other bits of the boat and so we may have another breakages. We have got a plan for repairing the boom, but the conditions are very tricky at the moment to attempt the repair. But we’ll be at the Doldrums soon. So, if we do it, then is when we’ll do it.”

Phil Jameson reports from Ericsson 4 :

It's been a pretty wet 24 hours aboard the good ship E4! We have been sailing along making a very high average boat speed. Not quite record pace, but very close.

We have a wind angle of roughly 100 degrees. Anything in that sort of region means some serious fire hosing on deck!

For Ryan Godfrey and I, this is where we get a sort of revenge on the rest of the crew. We spend our lives completely underwater up on the foredeck while the other boys take great delight in laughing at us. At this angle, they get a taste of it, but still no way near as bad as the front end. It humours us to hear them complaining about the water.

We got our first sighting of Ericsson 3, four hours ago. She is roughly 8 miles dead astern of us and sailing a very good race. I imagine we'll be tied together for a while now. It is quite good to have another boat in sight as it pushes you to race a bit harder.

We've had a few crimes onboard recently..... The latest one was in the toilet. I won't go into detail, but I can assure you, it wasn't pretty.

Another crime was the loss of the serving spoon which Dave Endean decided to throw overboard with the left over food. We are now stirring our meals with a winch handle! In Dave's defence, He was handed the pot in pitch blackness and asked to ditch the food overboard. So there is another culprit involved.

Everything else seems to be rumbling along okay. We've had our fair share of breakdowns, downtime and bad luck in this leg. We're just doing our best to minimise all that nasty stuff and keep the bow pointing toward India.

The crew are doing well with only minor injuries, which is a good thing. Tony (Mutter) is enjoying being back on the yacht. He's being extra careful not to hurt himself. I guess he just doesn't want me near him with the medical kit again!

A report from Ericsson 3 :

It is extremely close racing now. For the last hours we have been able to see Ericsson 4. I thought the race mode was at its highest level before, but now it has taken a few steps up.

It is just as exiting as it is hard to cope with the stress that the competition creates. Some people have a hard time watching a game of soccer when the score is equal and there is just a few minutes to go. We are experiencing the exact same feeling. But we have been feeling it since the scoring-gate and we will probably have to cope with it until we reach the finish line in about four days.

We have had a quite rough last 24 hours on a slamming reach with 20 knots in both wind and boat speed. Usually those numbers are about the same. But a few hours ago they started dropping and we and Ericsson 4 have lost many miles to fleet behind us.

For the moment it is really tricky and tiring to sail the boat at 100 percent. We got stuck in a big squall for a while and now the wind is shifting a lot, both in strength and direction. That means a lot of sail changes…

Rick Deppe reports from Puma :

Something very strange happened this morning. Hard to believe but somehow my watch reset it self whilst I slept, and put me an hour late getting into the galley to sort out breakfast. This could have been a big problem at any other meal time than breakfast or with any off coming watch than Salty (Rob Salthouse) and Michi (Müller).

Fortunately for me breakfast today is cold muesli, just add your own water. So when I got to the galley, I thought it was 0105hrs an hour early but was in fact it was 0205hrs and Salty had already dove into the day 11 food bag and had the muesli mix already halfway down his neck.

Why are we having breakfast at 0200hrs you are probably asking yourself, well the vessel operates on GMT ( Greenwich Mean Time) this is the time in Greenwich England on the 0 degree longitude meridian but the sun here at 73 degrees East comes up at around 0300hrs GMT. It takes some getting used to. So as I arrived at the galley making my excuses and apologies Salty and Michi just looked at each other grinned and told me not to worry about it. OK so I wont, phew.

The hard reaching/fetching conditions of the last few days have finally started easing up, that’s a good thing and I don’t mind admitting that last night I had just about had enough. One major reason for my frustration last night was that I was starting to have some equipment malfunctions, as there was so much humidity in the boat that my camera decided that it was finished for the day. Main problem with this is that I had a very important tape inside that camera and at that point didn’t know if I would be able to ever get it out. I put the camera in the engine bay overnight and fortunately this morning it fired up first time and I was able to retrieve the tape. OK, with the lighter winds will get us to Cochin a little slower but trust me as long as the other boats go a bit lighter than us I’ll happily do lunch instead of breakfast at this point.

Bouwe Bekking reports from Telefonica Blue:

Late yesterday afternoon there must have been some 'panic' in the race headquarters, as we got following message from them, I quote RHQ: “MRCC Madrid have just rung us to say one of your EPIRB has been set off. Can you confirm all is ok onboard and if you are aware that an EPIRB has been activated. We tried to ring but cannot get through?”

An EPIRB is an emergency beacon, which you can activate when you are in distress. Once activated it send a distress signal to a satellite, which then gets picked up by a land station. Luckily nothing of that, as we were all smiles and blasting along and actually started making again some gains. The wind had freed up, and the missing daggerboard was not so critical. Of course we responded quickly back that all was ok and we checked the EPIRB which is mounted at the stern of our boat, and indeed she was switched on. It has a hydrostatic release, so in case a boat sinks, it switches itself on. As we were more under water than over the water by sailing so fast, the machine thought we were going under, so it switched on. Actually good to know that this system works flawless and big brother is watching us.

Then last night we got “dogged” by a bad cloud, we had to go upwind for three hours in very light winds, and not having the daggerboard made it even more painful. In the mean time the other boats reached along. Sifi (Simon Fisher) and myself were sitting in the navstation, looking in disbelieve at the numbers: WHAT TO DO? Tack and try to find the same wind as the others or ride it out. Sifi in favour of tacking and me going straight. Tacking we would have not only lost miles to the finish, but more importantly we would have been sailing directly behind the leaders. We had another look at all the weather maps, yes, the east would be little better long term, but without the daggerboard we can only sail about 7-8 degrees lower than the others, so there is no way to match them. Therefore we decided to carry on, and hope we find a bit of luck while crossing the doldrums.

Andreas Hanakamp reports from Team Russia :

We have left the trail and are trying our own path. We believe we learned the hard way in the Atlantic Doldrums and we hope now that we will be luckiest going east.

It is very uncomfortable sailing at the moment. The boat is rocking and shaking in the beam reaching conditions. At least it is warm, no stinging in the face anymore when the water hits, more like the bathtub at home. Tomorrow afternoon we expect to leave the trades again and hit the doldrums, so expect lots of sweaty sailors on board Kosatka.

Surprisingly there is no marine life out here, no birds, no whales or dolphins, not even many flying fish. Have to ask Eric Hoyt from the WDCS what is going on here.

More photos on the following pages...

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