20.04.2005, 16:03
On the home stretch
Another flat calm sea greeted Tony Bullimore and his crew on Daedalus as they started day 72 of their around-the-world odyssey. They are becalmed once more, this time among the shipping and fishing traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. At the 07:00 GMT poll Daedalus was officially around the corner and pointing her bows directly towards Doha for the first time since leaving Qatar many weeks ago. If man had the ability to see over the horizon, Tony would be able to see the towering sand dunes and palm trees that are the hallmark of the Gulf State. Instead all he can see is a glassy ocean dotted with oil rigs and gas drilling platforms, also a hallmark of Qatar. “So near and yet so far,” Tony noted in his daily log.
From the bend in the Strait it is 275 miles to Doha. They may well be the longest 275 miles endured by the crew since setting off on the race as the forecast holds little hope of a fast and furious finish. The Met office in Doha is reporting 10 to 20 knots of wind from the northwest during the day today, but also reports variable 2 to 5 knots in the Strait. Tony and his team are going to have to get free from the grip of sultry air before they find fresh breeze, by which time it’s likely to be nightfall and the entire Arabian Gulf usually becomes flat calm during the dark hours. Like the crew on Doha 2006 before them, Tony and his team are just going to have to be patient. The race always comes to an end; it’s just the when it will end that reindexs a mystery. In a short missive Tony gave his best ETA estimate of Wednesday afternoon, local time.
Before daybreak this morning Tony sat at the navigation station and typed his daily log. It’s a habit that’s become routine. It has also been a good time to reflect on the day past and the day ahead and to keep the thousands of people around the world that are following the Oryx Quest 2005 appraised of life on board Daedalus. In what may be his final log of the race Tony described the conditions. “It's a dark night but we have lots of lights around us,” he wrote. “Oil tankers, container ships and small coastal traders that have been plying the Arabian Sea for thousands of years, and will probably still be plying these seas in thousands of years to come. Can you believe it, we passed so close to a small coastal trader today that we waved at each other and we could see the smiles on the faces of the crew of the other ship. It was all good stuff. The winds are exceedingly light and very fickle. One minute we build up a boat speed of around 8 knots and the next the wind has almost completely gone. This is a real assault course, but it is the kind of stuff that you sharpen your ability on and if you come out of it with a smile and a good stride, you have gained a little more in your life.”
The time spent at the nav station is also good for ‘what ifs’. Tony and his navigator Nick Leggatt have been calculating their performance in the Oryx Quest and measuring it against the performance turned in by the late Peter Blake and Robin Knox Johnston on the same boat when it was named ENZA. It’s an apples and oranges type of comparison, but if they cross the finish line before 09:15 GMT on Thursday they would have bested ENZA’s performance when the boat broke the Jules Verne round the world sailing record in 1994. Considering the current wind conditions it may be a close race against the ghost crew of ENZA. In any event Tony is pleased with their performance n this race and credits much of it to his crew. His log continues; “For us to drive the boat hard enough to break the old record, come second in the Oryx Quest 2005 race, get at least one of the leg records on the way round the world, and have several 500 mile plus days runs, is something all the crew can be very proud of. It is a statement of what a team of enthusiastic sportsman can do when put to the test. l can say that l have really enjoyed racing with all the guys on board, whether they are the crew with a lot of racing experience, such as Nick Leggatt, or have hardly done any sailing which applies to one or two of the crew. Without doubt l applaud each and every one of the Daedalus team for consistently giving it there best shot. They deserve it.”
In order to arrive before 09:15 GMT on Thursday, Daedalus will need to average 5.2 knots, precisely the speed the boat was traveling the last time it was polled.
To read 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
Slow, slow progress
It’s painful to watch as the Argos course that tracks Daedalus on her voyage around the world shows a thin red line wobbling down the Arabian Gulf on a course for Qatar. The Argos tracking program is programmed to show different colors for different boat speeds; red means that the speed in less than 5 knots. In fact a closer look at each poll shows some of the instant speed readings as low as 3 knots. It an ignoble end for a fine racing catamaran after a near perfect non-stop circumnavigation of the world. There was, however, one spot on the Argos that showed boats speed of 10 knots and it was the same time Tony was firing a short missive off to Race HQ. “We are going along at around 10 knots on a course of 318 Degrees true,” he wrote. “We are north of the Bulcha Oilfield and will probably stay on this tack for a few miles before we go over to a starboard tack which is more favourable for taking us to the finishing line. At the moment l do believe that we could still get across the finishing line on the Wednesday. We have a fairly strong northerly wind created by a moderate cold front that has been forecast by everybody. If the wind should go round a little, and free us up, we could get a few hours of exhilarating sailing that could take a good few miles off the distance to run. We are not on the favoured tack, and when we go over to a starboard tack, we can see that we are eating up more miles.”
It seems that the northerly wind did not hold and a few hours later Daedalus was back into low single digits. There are in a transition zone between wind being generated by a small stationary low in the Gulf of Oman and a weak area of high pressure over Qatar. There should be a reasonable northerly wind blowing between the two systems, but judging by Daedalus’s performance the real life situation does not correspond with the weather maps. So as the skipper and crew think longingly about that fine first meal that they will sit down to when they finally make dry land, they instead have to tuck into the last few stores left on board. James Dunning did the cooking last evening preparing the freeze dried food for the crew. “We have a kind of ships menu,” Tony wrote. “A couple of the guys are having chicken & rice and some clam chowder. I am having a good old fashioned beef stew. A couple more of these should do the trick until we can are stepping ashore in Doha.”
At least the are not bored. There is a lot of shipping of all kinds continually passing by, going in all directions, and for a while yesterday afternoon they were buzzed by a helicopter. The occupants seemed interested in what Tony and his team were doing, but after a while lost interest and flew over the horizon probably in search of bigger fish to fry. At the 06:00 GMT poll on Wednesday morning Daedalus was 130 miles away from the finish. If the forecasted breeze materializes they should be able to see the tall building of Doha before the sun sets on another perfect day in the desert. Stay tuned to the website – we will update throughout the day as Daedalus nears the end of her voyage around the world.
To read 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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