VOLVO OCEAN RACE – LEG 4

Volvo Ocean Race 9 comments

                                                             Ainhoa Sanchez – VOR 

                                                                             Ainhoa Sanchez – VOR 
When Joni Mitchell wrote the curious lyric, “But clouds got in my way” in her haunting melody Both Sides Now, she could have been talking about the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR).  From Spain to Capetown, Capetown to Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi to Sanya, and the 5,264 nautical mile Leg 4 challenge from China to New Zealand, it has been an endless struggle to navigate around and through the clouds.

                                                          Matt Knighton – Abu Dhabi

                                                                             Steffan Coppers – Brunel

The oceans make the weather on the planet earth, and clouds are born in that nursery.  So are the winds.

                                                            Armory Ross – Alvimedica

                                                                            Anna -Lena Elled – SCA

Sailing north to south across an ocean is like one of those crazy video games where threats – dragons or gangstas – pop up in your path and you have to figure out how to avoid the ambush.  Of course, in sailing you have no joy stick or weapons, other than your wits and team skill.  So you have to either steer around the trouble, or blast your way through.

                                                                         Matt Knighton – Abu Dhabi

                                                            Sam Greenfield – Dongfeng

That’s the unnerving thing about clouds on the ocean; they are mini storm cells, and some have tremendous winds at the surface, while others suck all the wind skyward, creating dead zones where a boat can get caught in their grip and languish for hours, or even days.  And each ocean has its own peculiarities when it comes to the nature of its homegrown clouds.

                                                             Sam Greenfild – Dongfeng

                                                          Matt Knighton – Abu Dhabi

To add to this chaos, there are the dreaded doldrums.  Every time I cover the VOR, I invariably mention these areas of no wind that ring the planet from east to west around the equator.  I think it’s time to explain how and why the doldrums come to be.

                                            Anna-Lena Elled – SCA

                                            Anna-Lena Elled – SCA

Doldrum is an old maritime word whose root is “dold”, which means stupid.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as, “a state of inactivity, mild depression, listlessness or stagnation”.

                                                             Francisco Vignale – MAPFRE

                                                             Francisco Vignale – MAPFRE

Technically it is an area of low-pressure around the equator, called the Intertropical Convergence Zone, where the hot air rises and the prevailing winds are calm.  As this hot air climbs into the upper atmosphere it is drawn toward the north and south poles, and then drops back to earth when it runs out of gas, transforming itself into the much-welcomed trade winds at the equator’s uneven edges.

                                           Sam Greenfield – Dongfeng

                                                       Sam Greenfield – Dongfeng

There is no way to avoid the doldrums, but you can cut your losses by avoiding the wind-sucking clouds or bouncing off the squalls.  But there’s a lot of luck involved.        
 Anna-Lena Elled – SCA
Sam Greenfield – Dongfeng

This time of year in the Western Pacific, it gets even trickier because there are not one, but two wind systems converging within this tropical zone: the winter monsoons and the South Pacific trade winds.  It makes for a very complicated mix.  And while the overall patterns are predictable, right down to the satellite and buoy GRIB File wind and weather forecasts the boats receive every day, when you find yourself in a Volvo 65 in the middle of the Pacific, the local conditions are ultimately determined by the individual cloud cells. 

                                                            Armory Ross – Alvimedica

                                             Matt Knighton – Abu Dhabi

Francisco Infante, MAPFRE’s onboard reporter, described one such encounter.  We just encountered a “storm cloud that looks like an atomic bomb.”            

                                                          Francisco Vignale – MAPFRE

So, what do you do when facing such a threat?  Well, you try and sail around it.  But that is often easier said than done.  Dongfeg had been clinging to a tenuous lead for several days when they got trapped in a black cloud’s windless grip, sitting there helplessly, watching Abu Dhabi and MAPFRE sail right on by.       

                                           Francisco Vignale – MAPFRE

                                                              Francisco Vignale – MAPFRE

This is what it felt like on Dongfeng, as described by Sam Greenfield.  “Can a cloud be inherently good or evil?  Do clouds feel?  Tonight a cloud stopped us dead in the water and allowed Azzam to sail past us from four miles back.  Sunrise was brilliant.  Heavy overcast with all different kinds of clouds.  Fluffy ones.  Sharp ones.  Pink, purple, orange, and gray ones with just enough gap between sea and ceiling to allow the sun to set the whole scene on fire…and Azzam was just a speck on the horizon.”         
 Sam Greenfield – Dongfeng
Sam Greenfield – Dongfeng

Sometimes, when the race is so tight, like it is with these evenly matched one-design Volvos, it’s often better to not be in the lead.  The boats behind can see what’s happening up ahead to the leader of the pack, either visually, or on their radar, and quickly steer clear of the wind traps.          

                                           Matt Knighton – Abu Dhabi

                                                                          Francisco Vignale – MAPFRE

It was a photo finish in Auckland, the “City of Sails”, as tens of thousands of sailing fans came out by land and sea at 9:30 in the evening, right after watching their national team defeat Australia in the Cricket World Cup.  They cheered in amazement as the top three boats crossed the line within eight minutes of one another after over twenty days of match racing across the Pacific Ocean.  Replacement skipper, and wily Volvo veteran Xabi Fernandez, sailed the Spanish boat MAPFRE to victory, edging out Abu Dhabi by four minutes, with Dongfeng in third.  MAPFRE’s victory was even more remarkable given the fact that their antennae broke in the middle of the race and they were without radio communication or any weather reports for three days before the problem was fixed.
      

    Ainhoa Sanchez – VOR  

                                             Xaume Olleros – VOR

                                             Xaume Olleros – VOR

Fittingly, the finish line on the North Island of New Zealand is called Aotearoa by the native Maori.  The word means: the land of the long white cloud.
  Ainhoa Sanchez – VOR 

                                                                              Ainhoa Sanchez – VOR 

Next Stop:  Itajaí, Brazil

                                                                        Ainhoa Sanchez – VOR 


                            VOLVO LEADERBOARD
Leg 1
Leg 2
Leg 3
Leg 4
Overall
Abu Dhabi
   1
   3
   2
   2
    8
Alvimedica
   5
   4
   3
   4
   16
Brunel
   3
   1
   5
   5
   14
Dongfeng
   2
   2
   1
   3
    8
MAPFRE
   7
   4
   4
   1
   16
SCA
   6
   6
   6
   6
   24
Vestas Wind
   4
DNF-8
DNS-8
DNS-8
   28


*Low score in the overall category determines position, so Abu Dhabi is now in first place.  They have the same number of points as Dongfeng, but they finished the last race ahead of Donfeng and have a better in-port race record.

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