VOR Leg Zero part 1/2

A bit late in the Leg Zero start - or a bit too early by the pin end of the line 2-3 minutes before the start to tack before the others. Credit: Paul Todd/Volvo Ocean Race

My blogging isn’t going well – 5 weeks since the last post. It is just a function of the pace in a Volvo Ocean Race, will try to check in more often until the start.

Last weekend we did the Qualifying Race, or Leg Zero, for this Volvo Ocean Race. This was the first time we lined up against the other boats – first in a couple of in-port laps, then “offshore” from Alicante to Palma de Mallorca and back. We didn’t get the best start, so chased around the first two laps. The breeze was very light and with the small race course we just had to do our best to keep clear air.

The new VO70 rule only allows for two masthead sails, so normally the boats will carry one code zero – upwind or reaching oriented – and one spinnaker type sail – downwind or reaching oriented. For this race at least Camper and Puma seemed to declare proper spinnakers while the rest of the fleet seemed to sail with more reaching oriented sails.

We were left a bit behind on the upwind up the coast to meet the expected northerly Mistral. During the race we had to do some safety drills for VOR Race Management, like Man Over Board drill, use the Emergency Steering System, sail with storm sails and deliver media content. Groupama seemed to have an issue locating or recovering their MOB, so we passed them and had a good fight up the coast where we slowly gained by sailing inside the gradual left shifting breeze.

We missed Moose on Leg Zero due to his appendicitis operation a few days before, but used him for the MOB drill to big amusement onboard

Before the start we had a pretty clear picture that we wanted to sail south of Ibiza which lies on the rhumb line, so as soon as we thought we had “enough” north shift – we started in an easterly breeze – we shot off the coast towards Ibiza. Of course we wouldn’t like to split and loose a good chance of lining up against the opposition, but from our position slightly behind the fleet it was hard to cover them, so we sailed what we believed would be the fastest route.

It soon became clear that Abu Dhabi and us were the only ones heading for the gap between Ibiza and Formentura, with the rest of the fleet sailing north of the islands. Abu Dhabi were leading the fleet and sailed high to get up to the others, while we pushed east in anticipation of the strong easterly shift just after Ibiza that would enable us to sail north towards Palma again. It was too late for us to get north anyway, as we would have to take a loss to get there at that time.

To be continued..

Nice to try out the podium as well, with our 3rd place finish

The Mistral is hard to forecast, at least west of Mallorca, and kicked in much later than forecast and stayed for a shorter time. None of the weather models we looked at for this race was close to the reality, and surely the other navigators will have scratched their heads as much as myself over this. So we chose to sail for the expected changes in the big picture (a high pressure system would move south over us), and what we could see. In the end one model seemed to resolve the situation better than the others, but I will keep that quiet in case the race start will be in similar conditions.

After Ibiza the right shift arrived as expected – with force. In the black night we were auto-tacked by the sudden 90-degrees shift, and ended up with the keel and stack still on the old side, heeled over nicely to 90 degrees until we got it all sorted. A good thing to experience this now and not during the race, damaging one sail and having us limping for a good while afterwards. This probably cost us the miles we were lacking to get in touch with the fleet again by Palma, we were about five miles behind Groupama and Abu Dhabi by Palma.

Our track as displayed by Deckman software, with wind vectors representing wind speed and direction. Northerly breeze sailing to Palma and finally southerly sailing back to the finish in Alicante

Leaving Palma and in the middle of the emergency steering drill, the breeze vanished and the fleet were parking randomly. Some boats seemed to have a clear strategy to sail north of Ibiza again, maybe due to one of the models predicting a northerly push there. We preferred to keep the boat moving in the right direction and keeping the options open for as long as possible, and ended up picking the gap between Ibiza and Formentura again. The more inshore oriented sailors onboard (no offence) complained about the sea state as we were really drifting for most the day in a funny swell, good practice for the race where we will see this several times.

Finally as we were south of Ibiza the breeze filled in from the south west where we were positioned behind Telefonica and Puma. From there on there were no real opportunities, we all sailed into the dying land breeze so the distances just increased. The northerly group finished several hours after us when the sea breeze filled in, except from Abu Dhabi who motored home and will have to complete their qualifier later! I heard a rumor that Puma never did their emergency rudder drill, so they might also have another go J

All in all good practice for us and a good result, nice for the team after all the hard work to get to where we are.

**Mistral is a strong wind from the Alps that strike the Mediterranean quite often. It is normally started by a high pressure in the Bay of Biscay bringing cold air over the mountains. You can read more about it here

**Rhumb line is the direct line between two waypoints.