Positionstabelle
20.01.2005
20.01.2005
VG DAY 75: 50 KNOTS UPWIND FOR SKANDIA YESTERDAY!
Sail 4 Cancer is the official charity of the Skandia Set Sail programme. Through Nick’s own personal challenge on the Vendée Globe, he is hoping to raise through your efforts £1 for every 1km sailed – 42,000 in total! If you would like to help visit : www.sail4cancer.org/vendee
RACE POSITIONS 0930 GMT: SKANDIA 7th, top VMG in the fleet, now under 400 miles from VIRBAC who is stalled by high pressure to the north. ARCELOR now being held, but made gains yesterday to be now be at just 333 miles behind SKANDIA. PRB holding 122 mile lead over BONDUELLE, and 180 on ECOVER as all three boats slow up in the Doldrums.
EXCERPTS from call with Nick last night after the wind abated and shifted to the south west
I was just setting up to tack, when a huge wave swept across the boat and knocked it sideways...cockpit full of water, and the boat knocked 100 degrees off track. I’m absolutely drenched...
Its been a pretty amazing day, been saying to myself this is mad! But I knew it wasn’t going to get life threatening. Here in the South Atlantic you know you are going to get these shitfights, but then they go away. In the south [Southern Ocean] you know there is another one behind. Here you have a shitfight, then a ridge of high pressure, then the trades, it changes, whereas in the south you have a month worrying about depressions, one after the other.
So its a completely different feeling, and I’m definitely enjoying it a lot more.
Just need to keep getting some good breaks, and try and capitalise when they happen. Its been hard though. It seems like every time I power up, something slows me down, the squalls, the seastate or some damage.
RACE UPDATE GOING IN TO 75th DAY
BALL OF LOW PRESSURE BOWLS OVER SKANDIA: Without a great deal of warning, and certainly in a more violent fashion than the weather files suggested, SKANDIA was last evening fighting against 40 to 50 knot headwinds. The winds, spinning off the north eastern tip of the low pressure system travelling east across Nick’s track, held above 40 knots for over 4 hours, with gusts above 50. Nick dropped the headsail and sailed with a 3 reefed indexsail...’the boat was comfortable, but it was incredible to see so much wind. The air is not as dense as in the Southern Ocean, as I couldn’t have imagined keeping any sail up in that kind of wind down there. I’m heading west on starboard tack, hoping to see the wind shift in to the west and then south west as the low tracks to my east.’ Sure enough, but quicker than he expected, the wind flicked very suddenly to the south west and dropped from 50 to 20 knots - ‘it was like someone flicked a switch! I tacked immediately, and then find myself with not enough sail up, heading north again, but with the waves still coming at me from the north and the wind behind me...it was bizarre, the tops of the waves coming towards me were being blown off by the wind from behind!’ By the 0400 position report, the seastate appeared to have settled, and Nick was recording the second highest VMG in the fleet, and had reeled Jean-Pierre Dick (VIRBAC) in to under 400 miles – Dick trying to cross the area of light wind that will confront Nick soon enough as well...
NORTH OF 40 DEGREE SOUTH: A big mental landmark, Nick has officially left the Roaring Forties, passing to the north of the 40 Degree South line overnight. He has Uruguay several hundred miles to his north, and the east coast of Brazil further uptrack. The next real landmark is to get to the Trade Winds, some 2000 miles away still, with a number of difficult hurdles in between – more of these little depressions, a big windless area or two, and the St.Helena high to negotiate.
TENTH BOAT AROUND THE HORN: Often in contact with Nick, American Bruce Schwab became the 10th skipper to round Cape Horn and enter the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile at the front the effects of the ITCZ (the Doldrums) are being felt, albeit in a moderate way, with BONDUELLE furthest east feeling most pain (6 knots of boat speed at 0400). Leading trio all in northern hemisphere and fighting their way through the unstable winds.
NICK’s OC SAILING TEAM MATE ELLEN suffers major damage to mast track, lead dropping fast, now at 2.5 days http://www.teamellen.com
JARGON BUSTER: THE DOLDRUMS:
a few degrees north of the Equator, there is an area known technically as the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). In very basic terms its where the North East Trade winds and the South East trade winds meet each other...effectively cancelling each other out as the result is air moving more vertically than horizontally – vertical air makes for a suction effect resulting in either no wind or often violent rain squalls. In the old days sailing ships might be stuck for weeks in the Doldrums...these days, it can be race losing or winning, but the light and powerful Open 60s can accelerate so quickly that they can use each squall to get themselves across relatively quickly – albeit with large amounts of sweat and frustration on the way...
SKANDIA DATA LOG 0930 GMT: data brought to you by BT Business Broadband, transmitted via Thrane&Thrane
LAT/LONG: 38 28 S / 51 12 W
WIND: 20 to 25 knots, South West
POSITIONS 1000 GMT 18th JANUARY 2005
BOAT / LAT / LONG / distance to finish
1. PRB, 5 08.48' N / 28 15.20' W, 2854.0 distance to finish
2. BONDUELLE, 2 32.52' N / 26 19.36' W, 2976.5 distance to finish
3. ECOVER, 2 11.88' N / 27 54.08' W, 3034.1 distance to finish
7. SKANDIA, 38 28.04' S / 51 12.00' W, 5783.1 distance to finish
For full positions report go to http://www.nickmoloney.com and follow the positions link
PARTNER OF THE DAY : B&G
Official marine electronics supplier to Nick and the Offshore Challenges Sailing Team
http://www.nickmoloney.com/bandg
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For more information visit http://www.nickmoloney.com or contact :
Helen King
hk@offshorechallenges.com
T : +44(0)870 063 0210
M : +44(0)7870 678360
*'MAN WITH A MISSION': Nick Moloney attempts to be the first to race around the globe in 3 disciplines, crewed with stops, fastest non-stop, solo non-stop
* Sail 4 Cancer is the official charity of the Skandia Set Sail programme. Through Nick’s own personal challenge on the Vendée Globe, he is hoping to raise through your efforts £1 for every 1km sailed – 42,000 in total! If you would like to help visit : http://www.sail4cancer.org/vendee
* Nick Moloney is one of an impressive group of Skandia Set Sail athletes.
* Skandia Set Sail is a global sponsorship programme that aims to offer people more opportunities to participate in the sport on a broader level. The objectives of the Skandia Set Sail Campaign are to make sailing more accessible, grow the sport's reach and enrich peoples' lives through the sport. The Skandia Set Sail portfolio is divided into three groups; events, teams and athletes.
* The portfolio includes the title sponsorships of Skandia Cowes Week, the world's oldest and largest regatta on the Isle of Wight, UK (title sponsors for 10 years in 2004) and Skandia Geelong Week in Victoria, Australia - now twinned with Skandia Cowes Week; UK sailors Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell in their Athens Star campaign; Sam Davies, the up and coming single-handed yachtswoman and her Figaro campaign; Austrian 470 sailors, Sylvia Vogl and Carolina Flatscher; the Skandia Brown Cup, the Scottish Schools Sailing Championship; Skandia Cowes Youth Week, a leading international match racing championship, the Skandia Yachting Academy (in association with Kit Hobday's Bear of Britain) and the Skandia Maxi, Australia's biggest ocean racing yacht and line-honours winner of the 2003 Sydney-Hobart Race, and the British Paralympic Association Sailing team.
* For further information contact http://www.skandiasetsail.com
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