Tales from the TJV

Team Cowes encounters their first big Doldrums rain squall, recounts Sam Davies

It was jubilant Sam Davies who came on the phone today. Over the last day she and Nick Moloney on Team Cowes have overtaken two boats and at the time of our conversation were holding fourth place ahead of Vincent Riou's PRB for the first time this race.

So how has this happened? "We kicked our spurs as we were playing Buffalo Girls Rule...." says Sam. "Two days ago we had a conversation with Meeno [Schrader]. He said ‘okay we have two opinions, we can either go with the fleet and be safe and hold our place but obviously there is not much of a passing lane that way. Or there is a westerly option, which,' he said, 'I can’t guarantee it’s going to work, it’s a risk and we still might end up seventh or eighth' - and we still might end up seventh or eighth from doing this.

"But he sounded quite confident, but he made us make the decision because there was too much risk involved from a good weather router’s point of view, I think! At the time it was a big risk but as it’s turned out it has looked better and better as we’ve gone on.

"So Nick and I had a think about it and we looked at all the options and basically from doing this race so far, whenever we are in the same position sailing in a straight line as PRB and VMI we are a little bit slower - we can’t get past them. We can’t overtake them, we might be able to just match their speed but that’s it. So we knew that if we just followed them into the Doldrums, once we came out the other side into the Trade Winds we are basically straight line sailing to the finish on one tack. There are no gybes and shifts which we could take advantage of to get past. So the only option to get past these boats was to take the risk and go the westerly option, away from the fleet. Take a different passage and hopefully get better winds through the ITCZ.

"As it turned out, the little depression that was forming that could have been bad for us, passed really quickly and we didn’t get the headwinds we were worried about and what’s happened as well is that we’ve ended up with slightly more wind and we’ve been sailing freer with a big spinnaker for longer than the others. We have also stayed on the rhumb line so we are sailing direct to the finish as of two days ago, so we are not doing any extra miles."

At the time of conversation Sam felt that they were just about to enter the Doldrums proper. "We haven’t really been in the Doldrums yet. We’ve still got 15 knots of wind in the northeasterly trade direction. But obviously we are getting there because this is our first big rain squad which has given us our first big windshift. Last night we were sailing in really humid conditions, we had two thunderstorms but not nasty wind squalls, just lightning and thunder and a little bit of rain. But now we are expecting it to be pretty hard for the next 48 hours, with squalls. Meeno said “the models promise relatively good wind conditions right through while passing the Doldrums.For sure there will be difficult to deal with nerve-rubbing, light air patches in between.” Then you get bits where the wind is going in the wrong direction and we will be pulling every sail back up and down, and no sleep because we will be changing the sails as quickly as we can. So we’ll be snatching sleep, not a nice routine like we have been enjoying over the last couple of days. It’s going to be quite hard work to get the boat through as quickly as possible."

"We’re in a big tropical rain squall. In fact the visibility is just clearing. The wind has been steady up until 30 minutes ago when Nick woke me up. And there was a big rain squall coming and we had to change the sails in lots of wind and then no wind and buckets and buckets of rain. Nick had a shower in the rain water and it is just clearing up now but the wind has completely dropped off."

Aside from merely trying out another tactical option being further west should allow them a quicker passage through the Doldrums than the boats further east. "That’s why we’re here. It looks better at the model and on the GRIB file, but the Doldrums are pretty unpredictable. We’re quite confident but it is still a risk that we are taking even with weather routing."

In the Mini Transat earlier this autumn going west at this point proved to be a big mistake. "It depends on the wind angle of the southeast trades<" says Sam. "Obviously we will be slightly harder on the wind than the other boats. For sure for the Mini Transat race this year it was a disaster if you came out low, because they were on the wind because the Trade Winds were really high. But generally it is not normally like that. Normally you are beating for half a day and then the wind starts freeing off in which case it is quite a small difference in the angles you will be sailing compared to the boats to the east of us. So it could be a problem, but in the normal situation it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. It may be the difference of 5 degrees wind angle, which is you are cracked off at say 60, the difference between 60 and 65 there isn’t much difference in boat speed - she says optimistically."

At present - touch wood - they have had no major gear failure. "We were looking at the spinnaker today and I called Nick up because it was getting quite tight and I said “it is getting quite close now and I don’t want to break the halyard or the bowsprit or the spinnaker so I was wondering if we should change down to the genniker.” And he looked at me and said “maybe we should just let God take it down.” I was wondering about that. Do we need the masthead spinnaker any more? It crossed our minds but then we started to see $$$ signs and in then we thought at the end of Mini two years ago and when Nick did the TJV last time we ended up spinnaker gibing into the finish on the last two days - so we put up the genniker."

The next 24 hours should be most interesting in the monohull fleet