Team SCA makes her break

Hats off to Sam Davies' crew as they lead out into the Atlantic in the Volvo Ocean Race

Image above courtesy of Expedition and Predictwind

Since Bouwe Bekking's Team Brunel crew demonstrated its outstanding boat handling to lead the 2014 Volvo Ocean Race away from Alicante on Saturday afternoon, the boats have been having a tricky time making the best of the moderate to light upwind, but more often all-over-the-place, conditions in the western Med's Alboran Sea.

Around 0500 UTC Sunday morning, the boats were passing south of Cabo de Gata, the headland to the east of Almeria. Team Vestas had managed to pull into the lead having got slightly out of phase with the rest of the fleet, continuing on closer to the mainland before tacking, and then benefitting from being on the right (ie northwest) side of the track as the wind turned inside out.

With the wind in the southwest and slowly veering, over Sunday morning the fleet converged with the Costa del Sol coast, before tacking south as the wind shifted into the north and back to the northwest late morning. Unfortunately mid-afternoon the wind faded again, with MAPFRE and Dongfeng first to find the new westerly breeze by heading south, causing them to pull ahead. By 1900 UTC as the boats were passing due south of Malaga, MAPFRE was still leading, 0.4 miles in front of second placed Vestas, with the wind backing into the WSW putting the boats on to a SSW heading, all the boats still tightly clustered apart from Dongfeng which had fallen off to leeward.

Dongfeng was the first to tack west for Gibraltar at around 20:30 UTC yesterday evening with Team SCA tacking just ahead of her at around 21:15. However the most significant move occurred yesterday evening when Team SCA continued on port, while Dongfeng tacked back on to the same southwest course as the rest of the fleet. By 23:00 UTC last night the girls were making 12 knots in 19-20 knots of wind from 250°, on a WNW course - ie just north of the layline to the Strait - while the rest of the fleet was still heading southwest towards the Moroccan coast, in 10 knots from 240 and making just 8 knots.

Around midnight the group to the south tacked north for Gibraltar and at the 00:57 sched Team SCA showed she had pulled off a major coup - in the lead and an unprecidented 4.5 miles ahead of MAPFRE, leader of the group heading up from the south. However this advantage evaporated as Team SCA was becalmed just short of Gibraltar - they were forced to kedge at one point - allowing the pack behind to close, coming in with breeze, Team Vestas Wind nosing into second place with MAPFRE falling off the pace.

Heading through the Strait, the fleet was required by the SIs to stay north, between the northerly shipping lane and the Spanish mainland coast. By 03:30 the breeze had filled in for Team SCA as those behind were becalmed allowing the girl's team to regain its  advantage once again. By the official 03:52 UTC sched Team SCA was just past Gibraltar and back up to 3.9 miles ahead of Vestas. Half an hour later and the chasing pack was on its way again, Vestas having erred south to pick up the breeze with Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Alvimedica falling in behind her.

By the 07:00 UTC sched this morning Team SCA was well past the Strait's busy shipping lanes and continuing west while behind her Team Vestas Wind was taking a different tactic and heading southwest. Since then it has been possible to follow the boats on AIS. This showed Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing had followed Team Vestas Wind southwest while the boats behind are taking a median between that of Team SCA and Vestas. Significantly, out to the west Team SCA was making 8.7 knots while those close to the Moroccan coast were making 12.

From on board Team SCA, navigator Libby Greenhalgh talked through their approach to the Strait: "There has been a few nervous hours, because it has been pretty tricky. It was hard from Cabo de Gato with lots of transition zones and lots of pirouhetting as the wind dropped out and everyone tried to go off in different directions to find some. The big split happened between us and the rest of the fleet - quite punchy at the time - where we chose to approach Gibraltar from the north and the rest of the fleet chose to approach from the south. We couldn't understand why they'd picked the southerly route. The northerly route seemed the safer and more obvious way to go, so we stuck to our guns and left the rest of the  fleet to it and got to Gibraltar quite a few miles ahead. Obivously we were waiting the position report whereas previously we'd been within eye shot, so when we got to Gibrlatar and the position report came in there were a lot of happy people on the boat."

Weather-wise looking forward - the 'Azores' high is at present centred due south of the Azores at the latitude of the Canaries and thanks to the passage of the substantial depressions crossing the Atlantic to the north, is slightly sausage-shaped along a W-E axis. The high will be the dominant feature of the next few days as the forecast has its centre moving east towards the Canaries over the next 48 hours. By Wednesday the 'high pressure sausage' has taken up a NE-SW orientation just off the African coast, so the scenario is in fact very similar to three years ago.

Option A - which looked most favourable before the start, namely to hug the African coast sailing down a narrow corrodor of favourable northeasterlies hoping that the high doesn't get so close to the shore that the wind shuts down altogether. This is the tactic which notably didn't work for Groupama three years ago

Option B - to head southwest around the west side of high, hard pressed in southwesterlies but in more reliable breeze.

However before then there are some differing weather routing options to play out. Currently upwind, Team Vestas and Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing are attempting to get directly into the favourable northeasterlies associated with the high and will be expecting to see the wind slowly veer over the course of tonight. Meanwhile Team SCA is aiming to pass through a cold front tonight at which time she will tack south as the wind veers northwest (at which point she should be seeing stronger breeze than the boats to the southwest).

Will the boats that choose Option B get through to the east of the Canaries before the door closes? Will the fact that the VO65s aren't as stable and don't go upwind as well as VO70s, but are rocketships running, affect navigator's decisions?