The Ocean Race 2023 leg 2: Cabo Verde to Capetown

gaw

gaw

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Forecast to fill in from the east in the next day or so, so maybe GUYOT gets a flying start
 
Fiji Bitter

Fiji Bitter

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All distances over 4 hours in the single digits, with only Guyot an amazing 30.9 nm.
Must have found a gap, or a number of squals.
Edit: or is it the flying start Gaw just mentioned in the previous post?

Poor Biotherm sets the record at 3.0 nm (yes, over 4 hours), must drive them crazy.

Anybody heard or seen any good oven baking stories, inside those cosy cockpits, yet?
 
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Fabricensis

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Goyots time in the sun (or rather in the wind) is over again with currently just 2.1 kn boat speed, now Biotherm is doing the best with 6 kn.

Malizia is still trailing but currently seems to average about 4-6 kn, so about 2 kn faster than the rest. However this is probably due to not being as far in the doldrums as the others...

Most weather models agree that there should be some relatively homogenous increase in wind over the next hours, so we might have a restart situation here.

Looking further forward there are significant differences for the south atlantic for the different models (even just looking 2-3 days ahead), so we might see different lines as some teams might be braver than others
 
H

Herman

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Weather routing Jan 30th
As people are busy installing solar panels in our house it's a mess here so this one will be quick and short. And no weather routing as they are all still in the ITCZ soup atm.

Pic 1 has the 00 UTC sat IR pic max zoomed.
Pic 2 shows the fleet is close to St Paul and St Peter Archipelago

The fleet looks good aligned (if they can get there) due south to that opening in the clouds. Seems a way out of the ITCZ.

When backtracking the tracker you can see that the tracks for Guyot don't wiggle that much as
they other four. Indicating more stable winds for them. The east seems best atm. As they are also closest to the rhumbline too, they are in the lead now.

pic 1 dolldrums.png
Pic 2 St Paul and St Peter archipelago.png
 
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symbio2

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Fabricensis said:
There are a few things to consider for Malizia 3:

1. The boat is much more radical than the other 'new' designs so one would expect it to take longer to find all the quirks
2. With the new foils and a rig optimized for heavy weather as well as a relatively heavy boat, if they need 18 kn wind to foil and the others need 15 kn, then they would lose a lot of miles in the conditions of the last few days
3. This boat was built for the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans but has yet to ever cross the equator. It was only sailed close to the European shore, one roundtrip to the Carribbean and now from Spain to the doldrums. Maybe it will be a rocket ship once it gets to 'its' sea

That being said between this leg and the RdR the team seems to be missing some pace
Click to expand...
The point is that Will Harris is aware of all of this more than anyone here, yet in the vid Harris appears surprised, disappointed, by the serious differential of speed with the rest of the fleet.
 
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O

Oxon

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symbio2 said:
The thing is that Will Harris is aware of all of this more than anyone here, yet in the vid Harris appears surprised, disappointed, by the serious level of speed differential with the rest of the fleet. (perhaps he overplays it ?)
Click to expand...
This is what stood out to me as well. Perhaps, with the limited time to test the new foils, they didnt get much data in the 6-10 TWS bracket. However, Borris did share his assessment that Davies' foils appeared initially faster than their latest foils. VPP should have given some signal of a potential/theoretical issue in light-air DW.

[full disclosure: big Malizia and Borris fan here]
 
Fiji Bitter

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You are out until you"re back in it.
It's really like that, and can be very demoralizing.
Wondering if the navigator/meteorologist can tell, with all the real time satelite info they have these days.
 
terrafirma

terrafirma

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Oxon said:
ICTZ crossing will be a restart for the race. Will be interesting to see if the Navs make their target ICTZ-exit takeoff windows.

One thing about Malizia is that their polars are likely (read hopefully) more different than some of the other current gen IMOCAs. So, at this stage, with their position, the only thing they can do is position the boat for future leverage in favorable conditions. This polar difference may not be taken into account in some of our routings and ETAs- where we still don't understand how they will perform in the southern ocean.

Interestingly, regarding Malizia, I saw a recent video of OBR footage where Will Harris says they "just could not find their mode" in the early days' light conditions. I find that admission remarkable and somewhat alarming. How can such a well-funded program not have spent the hours to practice, optimize, and document their modes in light-air DW. I appreciate that these conditions are not the norm for the VG or this TOR race but they are evidently not a corner case. Maybe something else is up aboard (e.g. sails).

It's just remarkable that the crew seems frustrated and surprised by the boat's performance (as opposed to being aware of the boat's weakness in those conditions). What a novel surprise to have at the beginning of the 2nd 4,600 nmi leg of a 12,000 nmi race......
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Very well said. I know Will Harris is well regarded be he wouldn't get a gig on Apivia or Linked Out or Charal IMO. His comments are extremely alarming. If they finish last in this race they can be written off going forward IMO.
 
Varan

Varan

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East appears to be paying off. Who wouda thought that. Weather overlay, likely BS, makes me wonder how far east one could have cut the corner. In any case, good on GUYOT. Let's see what lays ahead.
 
sunol

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Varan said:
East appears to be paying off. Who wouda thought that. Weather overlay, likely BS, makes me wonder how far east one could have cut the corner. In any case, good on GUYOT. Let's see what lays ahead.
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Pretty shocking after a few days of hearing west is best. And I thought the western boats were going to do well 24 hrs ago. Maybe not over yet, but now East looks better and better.
Forecast off by an unusual amount or just that’s what can happen in the doldrums?
 
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Herman

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LeoV said:
Thought the satellite went down. Know of Ascat, but that is not surface winds I believe.

Is there a link or is it not public anymore ?
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Hi Leo, there is still ASCAT data available, see the picture for 06:56 UTC. There were 3 satellites (hence ASCAT A-B-C data), one sat is out. I check regularly for coverage of the fleet. Especially in the ITCZ ASCAT data is the only and best tool for evaluating a forecast imho. But one third less observations means that you have to get more lucky that the area of interest is observed during a pass.

Expedition and LuckyGRIB provide ASCAT data that has been converted into a GRIB format. The ASCAT data provides two wind vectors which you can visualize stand alone with NASA's Panoply application.

More info on the ASCAT model here, including a reference to our Dutch weather service KNMI that is in the lead for processing the global data.

ASCAT Jan 31st.jpg
 
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