Mauritius to port

Volvo Ocean Race crews mainlining Stugeron in anticipation of tomorrow's cyclone

You can't help be impressed by how close the one designs 65 footers are making this Volvo Ocean Race. Getting on for nine days into this leg to Abu Dhabi, at the 0640 sched this morning, still only 8.6 miles separates the four leading boats.

The four runners - Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, Team Brunel, MAPFRE and Dongfeng Race Team made their 'big' tack north at around 1330 UTC yesterday, followed by Team Vestas Wind at 1530 and Team Alvimedica around an hour later, the US-Turkish team having continued on east for a little further than the rest. Team SCA tacked north at around 1500 but perhaps prematurely as they were further west and has since been struggling badly to make progress north.

The weather scenario for the boats is slightly unusual with what seems to be a windless area off to the east, the 'calm before the storm'. The leaders tacked north in around 12 knots of northeasterly pressure, while Team SCA made the same manoeuvre in around 5 knots...

At present the boats are into a 'rich get richer' cycle as the wind is set to free up over the course of the day (already it is around 70°TWA for the frontrunners).

Images courtesy of Expedition and Predictwind

Tactically the big call has been whether to leave Mauritius to port or starboard. Judging from their present courses the unanimous decision is to err on caution and leave it to starboard, passing to the west of it.

The elephant in the room is of course the well-forecast Tropical Cyclone Knut (as we're calling it) that at present is centred around 370 miles northeast of Mauritius. The leaders will fall increasingly under the influence of this over the course of today with the wind veering into the southeast, marking the beginning of the sleighride around the western perimeter of the Cyclone.

At present the leaders are still around 280 miles from the forecast track of the centre of Knut so the leaders should be into the thick of the big conditions in the early hours of tomorrow morning. As Bouwe Bekking warned yesterday, the issue is less likely to be about the wind strength they'll see on the west of Knut, but the sea state as this cyclone has been around for a while and will have kicked up some substantial waves by now.

Matt Knighton reports from Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing:

With the waves decreasing, the winds moderating, and the temperatures rising, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing has taken the opportunity to dry out and replenish energy reserves.  The beating of the last two days took a toll on the sleep patterns of the crew—Justin Slattery and Daryl Wislang particularly seemed to not have any “complete” watches off with sail changes always waking them up.

Paramount to getting the guys back on their feet has been food and drink. Azzam was fitted out with 27 days of food when it left Cape Town and as this leg looks to be shortening in length, we’ve been cannibalising from the last few days of provisions.

Isotonic powder – which is mixed into our drinking bottles – helps rehydrate and recharge as it replenishes the minerals sweated out of the body. Crucial to sailing in the tropics where the weather is warm, we ran out of this several days ago.  Diving for rations is an art form and after moving several food bags to dig deeper for the last day’s rations, we found the jackpot: a whole new canister!

Adil even got into the 'food bag diving' as he got critically low on another staple: hot sauce. Walking past the stack of food bags yesterday afternoon, there was a familiar pair of Musto shorts sticking out around the bulkhead. Adil was waist deep and upside down rummaging for a bottle. The smile on his face when emerged victorious was priceless.

For Parko though, true to his Australian form, the best motivator when it comes to food is his Vegemite. Vegemite goes on everything. However, it wasn’t until yesterday we learned the backstory behind his addiction.  Grinning he explained, “Mom bought and packed all the Vegemite at home for the race!”

Thanks Mom.

Corinna Halloran writes from Team SCA

When the wind decides to have a night off it’s a test for all of us. It’s a test for the navigator to make sure she doesn’t loose faith in her track. It’s a test for the helmswoman and the trimmer to concentrate and keep the boat moving. It’s a test for the skipper to keep her cool, and it’s a test for the rest of the crew to stay “sane.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it, you have to deal with the wind you’ve got, and if there isn’t any, there isn’t any,” Abby said. “But you hope that whatever we’re stuck under is going to keep moving through and we’ll come out of it. It’s only a short term thing so you have to work with it, it’s not forever.”

At the moment we’re stuck between two low pressures, one of which happens to be a tropical cyclone. “All the wind is trying to go to both low pressures,” Libby explained. The low pressures are literally sucking all the wind and thus creating wind holes—aka the most frustrating thing on the sea!

When you look at a weather map, you’ll see a low-pressure system has pressure gradients close together, much like the contour lines on a map. On a topography map, the closer the lines are together the steeper the mountain; in this case, the closer the lines are together the stronger the winds. In a typical weather system, the contour lines are evenly spaced until the pressure begins to dissipate where they become further and further apart. At the moment, there are two step mountains and we’re traveling by donkey in the valley between the two; tomorrow, however, we’ll trade our donkey in for a Ferrari as we zip into a tropical Cyclone.

The finicky weather has everyone on edge a little bit. Everyone’s tone of voice is a little bit sharper, there’s a particular ‘no wind’ tone, a mixture of frustration and concentration.

“Everyone deals with no wind in a different ways,” Dee explained. “The most important thing to remember is why people are getting frustrated, there’s no wind and we want to do well. This is almost worse than the Doldrums because you expect this in the Doldrums but you don’t expect no wind here.”

We’ve been working really hard for this for so long and the last thing we want is no wind. So, naturally, everyone is concentrated and focused on getting us through this difficult time. The only thing we can do at this point is hope the rest of the fleet is in similar conditions and remember there is tomorrow. After all tomorrow is going to be polar opposite (or so we hope!) as we get back into some wet and windy conditions.