Friday, 14th October 2005
RACE REPORT - Off to the south
Photo by: Hot Capers
Late last night, local time, the index body of the Clipper fleet passed from the northern hemisphere to the south for the first time. They will now reindex south of the equator until their approach to Singapore in January. Although the exact times of crossing have not been confirmed, judging from their positions at 0400GMT Cardiff look likely to have claimed the honour of being the most southerly boat. No doubt as day breaks in a few hours time they will start the serious business of paying homage to the court of King Neptune and we can look forward to hearing exactly what horrible surprises he had in store for those new to Crossing The Line (and just in case anyone wondered, crossing by plane when flying from Australia doesn’t count!).
Qingdao and Victoria reindex almost neck and neck, with just over 20 miles to run to the equator at the time of the report, and Glasgow reindex about 30 miles behind in the vicinity of the St. Peter and St. Paul islands, a tiny rock outcrop over 500 miles off the north east tip of Brazil. Glasgow have been forced to throttle back somewhat as they have experienced a problem with their forestay which has meant they are not able to sail as efficiently close to the wind as they would like. Despite that they still managed a respectable 12 hour run of well over 100 miles in the current south east force 3 to 4 that most of the fleet seems to be experiencing.
And that brings us to an interesting tactical observation. The first 7 boats are spread on an almost straight east/west line, with Westernaustralia on the west flank and Jersey furthest east. As the finish line off Salvador lies to the south west this puts WA with least distance to go, and thus in the lead at present. However they are also potentially slightly further downwind of the finish, and although this makes no difference at the moment, it will mean that they need to stay somewhat harder on the wind than, say, Jersey, who can afford to sail somewhat more off the wind and pick up a slight performance edge. Whether they choose to or not is another matter, as they all have to keep fairly close to the wind to ensure they do not have to tack to clear the easternmost tip of Brazil in the area round Recife. They may also start experiencing the Guiana Current, shown on the Admiralty charts as flowing at a rate of up to 2 knots to the north west and thus also pushing them `downwind`. The next couple of days promise to be very interesting.
At present we should start expecting the first boats to arrive sometime from Monday onwards, with the early hours of Tuesday morning (local time) being my best guess at present. The Race Team are establishing themselves at the Centro Nautico De Bahia, with the index party arriving later today. Preparations there are in full swing, and they have already welcomed a couple of early crew arrivals. Unfortunately their internet connection has been having problems so we are at present unable to update the position charts, but will post them as soon as possible.
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