The Ocean Race 2023 leg 2: Cabo Verde to Capetown

[oceangeek]

In the direct "from the boats" videos, they speak native languages, but then also do others in English.

And yeah, that would be the St. Helena High. Rotating counter-clockwise as highs do south of the equator...

 

[Fiji Bitter]

Pond of hunger.

Did you mean Pond of sex hunger, perhaps?
Oh wait...
And am I imagining things in above French video?


Fuck, I'm seeing double now...

Actually, making love is best going straight into the trades, they told me...

 

[pwormwood]

Me thinks Guyot should have driven off in front of the rest of the fleet to get themselves between them and the finish when they had the speed and distance to do so...

 

[terrafirma]

Me thinks Guyot should have driven off in front of the rest of the fleet to get themselves between them and the finish when they had the speed and distance to do so...

Whilst they are going slow now as they navigate this light segment they have put miles on the fleet. They were 20 miles ahead not long ago now 120 miles. They will leak some miles but there is still a very strong chance they'll get through this low into the pressure before anyone else and extend again. Interesting times..

 

[terrafirma]

Whilst they are going slow now as they navigate this light segment they have put miles on the fleet. They were 20 miles ahead not long ago now 120 miles. They will leak some miles but there is still a very strong chance they'll get through this light area into the pressure before anyone else and extend again. Interesting times..

 

[Fiji Bitter]

Fuck, Terra now seeing double too.
What are you doing?

 

[Tom O'Keefe]

I'm not seeing any relief for Guyot for about 30 hours if they continue on this jibe. The blind alley could be rearing its ugly prophecy The fleet is going around the outside and will have increasing pressure. It's going to be interesting to see how distance with speed plays out against significantly shorter and significantly slower routes. This next day and a half will be telling on how the two strategies pan out.

 

[Fiji Bitter]

And here the latest show, they are getting quite good, I reckon:

 

[oceangeek]

Over the last 4-5 hours, Biotherm and 11th hour have been running parellel about 3 miles apart, but Biotherm started 4 miles behind 11th hr, and now are 3 miles ahead. That doesn't bode well for 11th hr...

 

[sunol]

Looks like Neptune is finally addressing my complaint around the Unfair Treatment of the Western Fleet. Hhhrrrmmmpppphhh!

 

[Oxon]

I'm not seeing any relief for Guyot for about 30 hours if they continue on this jibe. The blind alley could be rearing its ugly prophecy The fleet is going around the outside and will have increasing pressure. It's going to be interesting to see how distance with speed plays out against significantly shorter and significantly slower routes. This next day and a half will be telling on how the two strategies pan out.

I think Tom is correct. Neither the GFS nor the ECMWF routings suggest that Guyot (aka 11th Hour's original boat "11-1") will prevail on this bet. But I'm equally sure that the H0 wx in both models does not match up to reality on the water. I would for sure prefer the western track here.

11HR (in 11-2) must be somewhat disappointed rn. While it's true that they have spent the past two-plus years preparing for this event- Charlie and Mark are newbies in the IMOCA fleet. In actuality, that makes Charlie the least experienced IMOCA-skipper in the current fleet. Perhaps his performance thus far is more impressive than for which he is generally getting credit?

 

[JonRowe]

While it's true that they have spent the past two-plus years preparing for this event- Charlie and Mark are newbies in the IMOCA fleet. In actuality, that makes Charlie the least experienced IMOCA-skipper in the current fleet.

Prehaps in general, but they have spent more time on their current boat than Kevin and Boris have on their respecive boats, while Guyot has the advantage of being a known boat and don't forget on this leg Boris is not aboard Malizia so the nominated skipper is Will Harris (altho backed up by Yann Eliès)..

 

[cill123]

Spotted this in Cape Town this afternoon

 

[symbio2]

The strategic battle is great. And just starting. (btw since few days the DTL are so irrelevant)

 

[Varan]

According to the tracker, the fleet looks to be setting up for the train ride home starting with a L forming off the coast.

 

[TheDragon]

And Malizia caught up, Will will be happy

 

[jimmy_81]

And Malizia caught up, Will will be happy

I sort of missed quite how they managed to close up, better reading of the pressure, sheer boat speed, or just the nominal DTF giving a misleading impression of how far behind they were to start with?

Fantastic to see such close racing regardless.

 

[oceangeek]

Being further west, they had more consistent and slightly stronger breeze for a day or two before hitting the doldrums, getting them to within maybe 70 miles of the southern leaders. Then in the last day, still being more west, they sailed a slightly hotter angle and made up more ground, and are now maybe 30 miles from the southern leader, but now in their wake.

 

[olo.0815]

First of all - hi everyone, happy to have found this forum!
While my 2-year old daughter is being properly indoctrinated to watch ocean racing, she's not yet able to satisfy my wish to geek out...

Even though my weather routing is definitely not on par with Herman's, I just wanted to share the results of playing around at FastSeas (I'm not affiliated with them but super happy about the ease of use): I've run routings from the position of about an hour ago to Cape Town with 105% (orange) and 115% (red) of the polars I've guessed for Malizia, and both arrive on Sunday around noon (confirming Herman's earlier routing). What I take from this, is that a few percent of extra performance don't seem to gain you too much in the current weather situation and that it's could be most of the boats coming in to the finish bunched up ahead of that front.
Any other insights?

 

[oceangeek]

Zoomed in a bit more tells another story...