Saturday, April 16, 2011

ENDEAVOUR 43

Boat: ENDEAVOUR 43

More: ENDEAVOUR 43 Specifications

News:

Volvo Ocean Race Leg 4 - East of the Antipodes Islands


Author: Volvo Ocean Race Media

The Volvo Ocean Race fleet is now some 80 nautical miles to the east of the Antipodes Islands at 49 degrees south, still all heading in a southerly direction. At last the weather reports are predicting fresh to strong wind, nearing gale force at times and backing into the southwest. The V.O.60s have been eagerly awaiting this for a few days now, in anticipation of their fast sleigh ride towards Cape Horn.

The boats are maintaining an east west spread of around 30 miles with Amer Sports Too furthest to the west, along with djuice, and News Corp furthest to the east.

Keryn Henderson wrote earlier from Amer Sports Too, "There is a real 'calm before the storm' feeling.. The Southern Ocean is about to come and bite us hard".

Position Report: Leg 4, Day 5, 0410 GMT


Update from Alby Pratt, News Corp - Racked Out in the Palace

We are now 5 days into the leg and aboard Team News Corp life is good and conditions are excellent. Compared to the last two starts out of Cape Town and Sydney where we have been hard on the wind in a lot of breeze, this restart has been a dream run. The light running conditions that we have been sailing in since we rounded East Cape, have allowed us to settle into life onboard and get into the watch routine of sailing, eating and sleeping very quickly.

Life down below has picked up where we left off and everyone is back into their little routines. Justin continues to leave his clothing strewn around the boat from bow to stern; Shreda [Damien Duke] has little bits of power bars or minute packs of nuts stashed into every nook and Barney
[Walker] has taken up his normal prized bunk in the very stern. This bunk, because of its position at the very back, is the darkest and quietest, which allows for the best sleeping. At the start of every leg someone will say that they are having that bunk this leg, but when the time comes it is "The Barn" who is racked out in the palace.

The navigation team of Nick [White] and Steve [Hayles] are saying that by midnight tonight we should be in about 30kts of wind, so I better make the most of the easy conditions whilst they are here, as it looks like the conditions are only going to deteriorate from here.

Update from Paul Cayard, Amer Sports One - Slaving over the Nav Station

The sailing has been fairly easy and straightforward over the last three days. We performed on manoeuvre in that period, a gybe. Actually that is not correct. You may have heard that we caught our first shark for the trip.. a little 3 footer got whacked by the keel and then landed on our
propeller strut. We had to stop and let Stefano [Rizzi] our swimmer get him off. Sharky came aboard for a few hours then we gave him a proper burial and put him back in the sea.

The smooth water and downwind sailing has made for good sleeping conditions for the crew. Inside the boat the house is in good order. Pepe [Ribez], our Spanish bowman, mediaman and safety officer, did a little fibreglass work yesterday just to trick something out. Impressive what these guys can do in the middle of the ocean. Things are neat and not wet inside. How unusual! That will all change soon.

The wind direction and the forecast have made it favorable for us, and the rest of the fleet, to head straight south. I am sure no round the world fleet has done more miles and not crossed the dateline than this race. Heck, we are going straight over the pole. Forget the icebergs, we'll
need the huskies. Should have read Shackleton's book instead of Clouds' [Roger Badham] (our meteorologist) book.

A front is coming in the next 12 hours. We will soon get some southwesterlies and start making some miles toward the Corn (Cayard for Cape Horn). The good news down here is that the miles are cheap. Degrees of longitude have fewer miles in them the further south you go.

It will be cold in 30 hours. We are expecting 30 knots [wind] from 200 [degrees on the compass]. That is straight off the ice. With 200 wind direction, we will be sailing 90-110 [degrees] true wind angle, so the fire hose will be turned on again...we will see how much I missed that. The Oakley face mask will be on; the survival suit will be the apparel of choice for warmth and safety, the lobster gloves, the industrial strength balaclava, and a few pairs of socks. The harness will be the top layer just to make sure we don't get squirted off the deck, like cigarette butts getting hosed off the sidewalk in front of a Paris cafe at 0500.

It is starting to feel like the Southern Ocean. Grey and foggy. The birds are starting to appear. Saw our first albi [albatross] today. I have woken up a couple of times to the sound of the water rushing by my head, 3 inches away outside the hull, thinking we were doing 30 [knots boat speed] only to find out that we are doing 11 knots. Can't imagine how we slept doing 25 last time. Guess I will get used to it again. This is all fun for me - the adventure of it all.. bringing back great memories. Plus we have a great race to exercise our minds with.

I have been grinding away with my routing tools, working with Roger Nilson, our navigator and generally trying not to let Dalton find that I am not just riding around down here playing video games. Honestly, I have been real busy working on the routing, the sail chart and the polars
[angles for optimum boat speed] for this relatively new team (not as many hours knowing the boat as illbruck obviously). The amount of information now available is unbelievable. Several grib files and 200 weather maps, satellite pictures, and other sources of information, every day. This
compared to 1 grib file and 10 maps per day last time. You can definitely keep two people busy 24 hours a day analysing this stuff. Luckily Roger, who is 50+, only sleeps 4 hours a day but I, at a youthful 42 still need my 4 hours per day or I get grumpy. So we just have to make do with 42 man hours per day on this stuff.

Got to get back to looking at the front.

Update from Stu Bannatyne, illbruck - Jamie Takes a Cold Dip

January 30 has rolled around again as we crossed over the International Dateline and we have a new lease of life from our biggest bloke, Jamie Gale. He has proven to be a sensation this leg so far and from what we have seen thus far, we are looking forward to what amazing feats he will dazzle us with next.

He has been moving with the speed and agility of a man half his size, but thankfully his renowned strength has not suffered in the least. He is still the only guy around who can pull code zeros to the masthead solo and then be back on the pumps [grinders for the winches] for a solo grind in the blink of an eye. Always a gentleman he will be the first to offer a round of coffees or to bail the bilge. It was his misfortune to draw galley duty for today (and yesterday due to the aforementioned hiccup in time) not a word of complaint as the dishes were done and the galley left
spotless for two consecutive days.

Another fine example of Jamie's newfound dedication and commitment occurred this morning. On discovery of some weed fouling our strut drive Jamie declared emphatically "This is bull****, we are sailing around with weed on, I'm going in. Where are the flippers?" While Ray scrambled for
the flippers and mask someone casually mentioned the fact that we were approaching the latitude of Stewart Island and the water might be a bit chilly. "No problem," replied Jamie, "As a nipper back in Auckland, I used to dive for scallops in water a lot brassier than this, in winter". Not even a nearby basking seal would put him off as he leapt in, removed the offending weed and was back on board before anyone could even offer him a hand. As he went below to dry off, his parting comment to Crusty was, "Maybe you could go a little slower than 4 knots before sending me in next time?"

Thank you Jamie.

Update from Kevin Shoebridge, Tyco - Barometer is dropping

A disappointing last six hours as we have taken a five mile loss on the fleet. We suspect we had a light period [of wind] for two hours that must have been quite local. We also have had to drop a spinnaker and do another back down. A large 8 foot long piece of kelp around the keel was the culprit.

The barometer is dropping and we are starting to get increases in breeze making for some nice sailing. long may it continue. The temperature has finally dropped and the sky has turned grey as we are now at 50 south. It's like there is a line you cross and these become the standard
conditions.

Plenty of good eating and sleeping conditions at present; we are making the most of it before things become a little more exciting and tense. The fleet is unbelievably close at present and it will be interesting to see the strategies [of the boats] unfold over the next few days.

Undoubtedly the most enjoyable start to a leg to date - good miles and actually going downwind beats going upwind reefed and with number 4 [jib]. Battling with weed today. We have had three instances we have had to deal with, not easy when doing over 12 knots!

Update from Knut Frostad, djuice - Waiting for the storm to come...

It's pretty exiting onboard right now. The last ten hours the wind has slowly been building, knot by knot, as we are fast approaching a big mother of cold fronts flying in from the west. The front is doing about 35 knots right now. We are doing 18-20 knots going south, and very soon we will meet... a 90-degree shift to the left with more wind. Right now we have 30 knots [wind], the big spinnaker and we are quietly surfing down small waves in the darkness. Southern Ocean is certainly like no other place on earth. It's colder, darker, greyer, more fog and very, very wet. It's so wet in the air that your hair is wet after fifteen minutes, and it's not raining right now.

Inside the boat is stacked to the roof in the stern. Every single food bag is carefully positioned to weather of the rudder, day 26 all the way in the back. Day 6 is closest to the stern watertight hatch and so is crew gear, spare parts, tools, storm sail, light air sail and medical kits. The only thing left up forward is the safety gear, harnesses, survival suits and the oilskins of the guys who are off watch. The standby watch has already started to sleep in their oilskins, as they need to be on deck quickly when things are happening.

All in all it's an exiting night so far. We just wait and prepare ourselves...

We have positioned ourselves to the south and west of the fleet, although very close to the others, to take some advantage of the front approaching from the west. However, we don't believe in any big gains, at least short term, as it's not quite such a good course than the guys have to the east. We did have a few knots more wind earlier. Tonight it's more about being prepared and making nice safe manoeuvres, when the mother of fronts is catching us, in a few hours...

More Information:

  • YachtsandYachting.com Volvo Ocean Race Information Page
  • www.VolvoOceanRace.org

See also: ENDEAVOUR 42 for sale