03.04.2005
A painted ship on a painted ocean
The gap is closing fast between Team Daedalus and a severe tropical depression 1,300 miles to the northeast of Tony Bullimore and his multinational crew. The tropical low, not yet a full blown cyclone, is tracking steadily toward the southwest, deepening and gathering steam as it moves directly toward the island of Mauritius. At the 07:00 GMT poll on Sunday morning Daedalus was 635 miles south of Mauritius, a required turning mark of the course. The boat was sailing at 14 knots on a course that would take them well beyond the island. At the same time tomorrow the center of the low is forecast to be 500 miles east of Mauritius while Daedalus, if Tony and his team are able to indextain present speeds, should be just over 200 miles from the island starting to feel the first effects of the swirling winds. The good news is that the wind should be from the south or southeast allowing the crew to ease sheets and scoot north cutting between the island and the gale force winds raging closer to the center of the storm. It’s going to be close; if Daedalus, for any reason, slows down, or the storm picks up speed, the gap may be too narrow to chance the gap and Bullimore and company will have to run west and wait it out. It will be a dashing blow to the crew who have already run away from one hurricane on this circumnavigation, Hurricane Percy in the South Pacific. The next 24 to 36 hours are going to be interesting.
The only thing interesting happening on board Doha 2006 is that the crew went swimming. Saturday morning dawned bright and windless as the boat floated listlessly on a gently heaving ocean going nowhere slowly. Jacques Vincent and Jonny Malbon took the opportunity to go for a dip, diving off the bowsprit and for a while outpacing the boat through the water. Mid ocean swimming in the tropics is truly one of the sweetest pleasures in life. The water is a brilliant blue that wraps around you so warm that can’t feel where your skin ends and the water begins. Towers of light filter through the surface and stream down as far as you can see. As the light fades into the depth, the water turns an incredible shade of lapis blue and you know that down there lurk some of the most unimaginable sea creatures. It also allows you to look at your boat from off the boat, the first time in 57 days for those in the water. Skipper Brian Thompson noted the swim in his daily log. “This morning we were going particularly slowly, just 3 knots, slow enough for Jonny and Jacques to leap over the bow, swim alongside the boat and climb up the stern,” he wrote. “The water temp is still 27 C so it was a perfect deep, clear, blue pool. There is not a cloud in the sky and with the low humidity drying out is not a problem.”
There are no clouds anywhere in sight as the crew coax what speed they can from the boat as they wobbly their way north. “A painted ship on a painted ocean,” is how Will Oxley described the conditions in his log. They are caught in the grips of a massive high pressure and are trying to coax as much as speed out of the boat as they can. Unfortunately what wind there is, is coming directly from the same direction they are trying to go forcing the large catamaran to tack back and forth to make any progress. Will Oxley described their current weather situation in his daily log, “The fine weather comes from the establishment of high pressure in the area and the strongest wind in the whole Arabian Sea at the moment is around 12 knots,” he wrote. “I guess that means we should be happy with the 8 knots we have, but unfortunately the wind has a nasty habit of coming from where we want to go. I'd like to say it is going to come good soon, but the forecasts are for continuing light winds and more high pressure.” He then tossed in a meteorological lesson. “Most of us are familiar with the concept of land heating up during the day and the creation of sea breezes, and land cooling down at night with the resulting land breezes. The prevailing winds in the Indian Ocean are known as the monsoons and as I understand it they occur as a result of heating and cooling on a grand scale. A bit of basic weather lore: high pressures are areas of descending air, while low pressures are areas of ascending air. This means that in summer the huge land mass of Asia heats up and creates a large area of low pressure. The waters of the Indian Ocean are relatively cooler than Asia and so high pressure resides on the ocean. The wind then blows in a steady direction from the high pressure to the low pressure. Throw in a bit of coriolis effect and this is how the Northern Hemisphere SW monsoons are created. In winter the situation is reversed with the land being relatively cooler than the ocean, and so the high pressure resides over the land and the low pressure sits over the water. This reverses the winds and creates the NE monsoons. So far so good. Good breezes in each case. The problem, for us, is the "inter-monsoon season" where the NE monsoons are gradually replaced by the SW monsoons and, yes you guessed it, this occurs in April and May.”
While their progress may be slow, it’s still spectacular sailing. Brian Thompson described a visit by some of the local sea life. “Last night we had a number of dolphins jumping alongside us for an hour,” he wrote. “They are tiny here, hardly bigger than tunas, but as inquisitive as they are anywhere. On the port hull squid were launching themselves at the deck and leaving inky trails. These stains will be there for days until the sun can bleach them off, but the squid themselves managed to escape through the trampoline back into the sea.” They were also visited by two Killer Whales. One went directly under the boat and its tall dorsal fin and black and white markings were perfectly clear. Will Oxley, surprised to see Orcas so far north, did some research and found that they are the second most widespread mammal in the world with the Arabian Sea listed in their distribution. “Well you learn something every day!” he noted in his log.
At the 07:00 GMT poll Doha 2006 was 630 miles away from the entrance to the Gulf of Oman. Add the distance from there to the finish and the crew are almost exactly 1,000 miles from the warmth of friends and family. With the fickle conditions no one is trying to predict a finish time, but it’s safe to say that this will be their last weekend at sea.
To read the rest of Brian Thompson’s and Will Oxley’s log all the crew logs from Doha 2006 go to www.maxicatdoha.com.
To read all the logs from Daedalus go to www.teambullimore.com.
--- Brian Hancock brian.hancock@qisel.com
www.oryxquest.com
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