When Joni Mitchell wrote the curious lyric, “But clouds got in my way” in her haunting melody Both Sides Now, she could have been talking about the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR). From Spain to Capetown, Capetown to Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi to Sanya, and the 5,264 nautical mile Leg 4 challenge from China to New Zealand, it has been an endless struggle to navigate around and through the clouds.
The
oceans make the weather on the planet earth, and clouds are born in that
nursery. So are the winds.
Sailing
north to south across an ocean is like one of those crazy video games where threats –
dragons or gangstas – pop up in your path and you have to figure out how to
avoid the ambush. Of course, in sailing
you have no joy stick or weapons, other than your wits and team skill. So you have to either steer around the trouble,
or blast your way through.
That’s
the unnerving thing about clouds on the ocean; they are mini storm cells, and some
have tremendous winds at the surface, while others suck all the wind skyward,
creating dead zones where a boat can get caught in their grip and languish for hours, or even days. And each ocean has its own
peculiarities when it comes to the nature of its homegrown clouds.
To add
to this chaos, there are the dreaded doldrums.
Every time I cover the VOR, I invariably mention these areas of no wind
that ring the planet from east to west around the
equator. I think it’s time to explain
how and why the doldrums come to be.
Doldrum
is an old maritime word whose root is “dold”, which means stupid. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as,
“a state of inactivity, mild
depression, listlessness or stagnation”.
Technically it is an area of
low-pressure around the equator, called the Intertropical Convergence Zone,
where the hot air rises and the prevailing winds are calm. As this hot air climbs into the upper
atmosphere it is drawn toward the north and south poles, and then drops back to
earth when it runs out of gas, transforming itself into the much-welcomed trade
winds at the equator’s uneven edges.
There is no way to avoid the
doldrums, but you can cut your losses by avoiding the wind-sucking clouds or
bouncing off the squalls. But there’s a
lot of luck involved.
Anna-Lena Elled - SCA
Sam Greenfield - Dongfeng
This
time of year in the Western Pacific, it gets even trickier because there are
not one, but two wind systems converging within this tropical zone: the winter
monsoons and the South Pacific trade winds.
It makes for a very complicated mix.
And while the overall patterns are predictable, right down to the
satellite and buoy GRIB File wind and weather forecasts the boats receive every
day, when you find yourself in a Volvo 65 in the middle of the Pacific, the
local conditions are ultimately determined by the individual cloud cells.
Francisco
Infante, MAPFRE’s onboard reporter, described one such encounter. We just encountered a “storm cloud that looks
like an atomic bomb.”
Francisco Vignale - MAPFRE
So, what do you do when facing such a threat? Well, you try and sail around it. But that is often easier said than done. Dongfeg had been clinging to a tenuous lead for several days when they got trapped in a black cloud’s windless grip, sitting there helplessly, watching Abu Dhabi and MAPFRE sail right on by.
So, what do you do when facing such a threat? Well, you try and sail around it. But that is often easier said than done. Dongfeg had been clinging to a tenuous lead for several days when they got trapped in a black cloud’s windless grip, sitting there helplessly, watching Abu Dhabi and MAPFRE sail right on by.
This is
what it felt like on Dongfeng, as described by Sam Greenfield. “Can a cloud be inherently good or evil? Do clouds feel? Tonight a cloud stopped us dead in the water
and allowed Azzam to sail past us from four miles back. Sunrise was brilliant. Heavy overcast with all different kinds of
clouds. Fluffy ones. Sharp ones.
Pink, purple, orange, and gray ones with just enough gap between sea and
ceiling to allow the sun to set the whole scene on fire…and Azzam was just a
speck on the horizon.”
Sam Greenfield - Dongfeng
Sam Greenfield - Dongfeng
Sometimes,
when the race is so tight, like it is with these evenly matched one-design
Volvos, it’s often better to not be in the lead. The boats
behind can see what’s happening up ahead to the leader of the pack, either visually, or on their radar, and
quickly steer clear of the wind traps.
It was
a photo finish in Auckland, the “City of Sails”, as tens of thousands of sailing
fans came out by land and sea at 9:30 in the evening, right after watching
their national team defeat Australia in the Cricket World Cup. They cheered in amazement as the top three
boats crossed the line within eight minutes of one another after over twenty days
of match racing across the Pacific Ocean.
Replacement skipper, and wily Volvo veteran Xabi Fernandez, sailed the
Spanish boat MAPFRE to victory, edging out Abu Dhabi by four minutes, with
Dongfeng in third. MAPFRE’s victory was
even more remarkable given the fact that their antennae broke in the middle of
the race and they were without radio communication or any weather reports for
three days before the problem was fixed.
Ainhoa Sanchez - VOR
Fittingly,
the finish line on the North Island of New Zealand is called Aotearoa by the native Maori. The word means: the land of the long white
cloud.
Ainhoa Sanchez - VOR
Next Stop: Itajaí, Brazil
Ainhoa Sanchez - VOR
VOLVO
LEADERBOARD
Leg 1
|
Leg 2
|
Leg 3
|
Leg 4
|
Overall
|
|
Abu Dhabi
|
1
|
3
|
2
|
2
|
8
|
Alvimedica
|
5
|
4
|
3
|
4
|
16
|
Brunel
|
3
|
1
|
5
|
5
|
14
|
Dongfeng
|
2
|
2
|
1
|
3
|
8
|
MAPFRE
|
7
|
4
|
4
|
1
|
16
|
SCA
|
6
|
6
|
6
|
6
|
24
|
Vestas Wind
|
4
|
DNF-8
|
DNS-8
|
DNS-8
|
28
|
*Low score in the overall category determines position, so Abu Dhabi is now in first place. They have the same number of points as Dongfeng, but they finished the last race ahead of Donfeng and have a better in-port race record.
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