Oceanracing - Clipper 05-06 Round the World Yacht Race

Clipper 05-06 Round the World Yacht Race
www.clipper-ventures.com - Übersicht

05.01.2006
Thursday, 5th January 2006 Photo by: US DOD
The light winds to the north west of Australia
have started to take hold properly now, with boats’ twelve hour runs dropping from 110 plus to less than 80. This is good news for the boats further south, and Glasgow put in 10 miles more than most, and Cardiff took a whopping 40 miles off the leaders. They will soon hit this band, and Glasgow is probably already in it.

This next few days will be testing for the crews, and will make or break the race to Singapore for them.

Leichte Winde im NW von Australien

As the illustration shows there is not a lot of wind around; the consolation is, however, that this hole closes up fairly rapidly, just not in a very stable manner. What this means is that the crews who take advantage of all the wind shifts, of any nearby squall clouds, and who generally run around changing sails like a puppy on speed will be the ones which make the miles, and thus the place changes. The actual sailing conditions on this leg will call for far more crew work and sail evolutions than in the previous leg, which had much stronger, but also much more consistent, wind. The combination of more work, much hotter conditions and increased humidity will make this a testing time for the crews, especially those just joining. Victoria’s latest diary is a good example of this, Jersey has a sweatshop going on (literally) for sail repairs and from New York we have heard that skipper Joff Bailey has had a decent lunch, so obviously all is right in his world.

Overnight there is already evidence of this. Liverpool has leapfrogged New York, Victoria and Qingdao, and Durban has taken back the top spot from westernaustralia.com. A difference of only a few hundred meters can be enough to catch a puff of wind, and in these conditions doing 4 knots to your opponent’s 2 is crucial. Once the fleet reaches the Sunda Straits and goes past Krakatoa (still about 800 miles away) the opportunities for passing will not be as much.

The Wharton Basin is nearly 6 kilometres deep in parts, and this is what the fleet is passing over now. There is excellent scope for midnight watch stories on the windward rail about sea serpents, giant kraken and other such delights – all good incentive to stay on the boat! One thing that the joining crew will notice is the deep, deep blue colour of the water, so much more so than along the coast.