Conditions at sea at least seem blissful if not fast. Conditions in my office however are still a little foggy after a successful and well attended Narrow Escape Primer on the docks at the NYC.
Here is some e-mail from the boat (last night):
Hello to everyone. We have just finished our first offshore hot dinner. This is one of Bill’s
The wind is still light, about 8 knots from the west and we have continued over the course of the afternoon with full main and jibtop. the weather is overcast which is typical for this part of the race. The boat was flat enough today so that we were able to make 4 or 5 gallons of water.
Once I send this note I am hopeful that we will have an updated grib file and see if our push to the west will be rewarded with some wind.
Hope that all is well for you all,
Doug
This morning:
We have just completed our 0800 roll call without incident. From that we are now seeing some of the same things that you will have seen. The southern boats appear for the time being to have made some distance on us over the past 24 hours. We have been trying to find the line between the radical southern route which gets us to the wind, but not necessarily Hawaii. We have been thinking, or more precisely hoping, that the high would revert to its more normal position a little further north and we would have some advantage over those who chose to sail the longer course to the south.
We have had light and variable winds overnight and have tried to stay to a line that would bring us just south of the high. With the information from today’s roll call we are now going to ease the sails a bit and add some additional southing to our course. With any luck the high will still move northward and we can make back some time from this position.
Last night we had a pod of dolphins running with us for about an hour. I had not previously seem that at night. They look pretty impressive with the bio-luminescence all around.
Thanks again everyone,
Doug
Sent from the boat at 1444 this afternoon:
Chuggy seems to remember something about not sailing into the centre of a high pressure area. Something about less wind?? I know that no one wants to render any outside assistance so maybe just nod your head when you read this... We have spent the first part of the morning thinking and rethinking our route through the bottom part of the high pressure area. The big wind barbs, that tell the story so clearly at the scale of the whole ocean, leave a little detail out of the picture when we get zoomed right in.
But notwithstanding these wind concerns I can report that we are now headed down track at 6.5 knots with the main and jibtop. Thank goodness for that big mainsail.
So far our concerns about being overpowered have not been too much of a concern.
Chuggy and Ross are on shift now.
The weather is really quite beautiful, shorts and tee shirts and lots of sunscreen.
Web
We have about 10% cloud cover, blue blue water, and a little less than 10 knots of wind.
Except that we are concerned that our competition has more wind than us we would be completely happy.
Oh by the way I have just handed the Iridium phone to Chuggy
Hope that you guys are all well,
Dougie
Last crossing we spent a little (too much) time doing research in "the Ridge". The ridge can be a very nice place with balmy weather but very little wind. If you are racing you would try to cross it at right angles. We must have missed that memo.
The Winnipeg phrase above was coined at that time. We were making about brisk walking speed and we had about that far to go!
This year however light wind has clamped down over most of the at fleet presently at sea and extends to just about everywhere any of them might even consider going.
So it becomes a game of heading to where you think things will improve first, trying to minimize distance to get there and being mindful that you need a runway of Tradewinds that will take you all the way in.
In Blog Central I have the exact same software as the onboard team and I am "paper trading" the decisions they might make based on Narrow Escape's Polar Diagram and GRIB (weather map forecasts) Files that the software animates.
The forecasts change a little every 6 hours and the longer out you look the less reliable the predictions become.
According to me (and the GRIBs) they are struggling in a kind of isolated little High which is weakening and which they are getting west of. But right after that?
Just wait there and the Ridge will come to you! The Ridge, which is a fixture off the coast of Southern California in the summertime features in most Transpac Races and extends from the Pacific High (Transpac Weather Maker) along a northwest/southeast line. In a typical Trasnpac Race the boats encounter the ridge about 400 miles offshore. They would like to cross it (right angles - see above) quickly because the wind, which loosely follows the isobars swings around behind them heralding spinnakers for the long and joyous slide into Hawaii.
As the weird little High resolves and normal conditions re-establish themselves offshore the ridge is forecast to swiftly cross over our favorites (as opposed to the other way around) leaving them on the good side and and opening the way into what look like typical 15 knot tradewinds south of 22 degrees N and west 131 W.
It looks to me like there might be at least another 24 hours of pain for them before things very slowly improve as the get down the track. Right now I am calling this a rich get richer scenario.
And things don't look too good for the 50's scheduled to start tomorrow with light onshore winds and the weirdness or team has faced blocking their way too. Right now the big guys look to have drawn the best start date. The near shore wind will be light but they deal with light better and tradewinds like conditions back fill north towards the mainland for them.
The game plan onboard Narrow Escape remains to keep in touch with their fleet until such time as conditions play more to Narrow Escape's strengths - namely down wind and more wind.
Cap't Billy
No comments:
Post a Comment