Volvo Ocean Race - Dongfeng Race Team takes on the Doldrums

by Dongfeng Race Team on 23 Oct 2014 Known for erratic light airs alternating with sudden gusts that can last a minute or an hour from the giant unstable vertical clouds, the Doldrums (aka more officially the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone) are the unavoidable low-point of leg 1 of the Volvo Ocean Race for the determined men on Dongfeng.

No tide and no wind. The Doldrums have teased and tormented sailors for as long as we can remember. Every sailor’s worst nightmare, the Doldrums are where the North East Trade Winds of the North Atlantic meet the South East Trade Winds of the South Atlantic and, effectively, cancel each other out as the air heads upwards. A place of dead calms that can span up to 400 miles, where the speedometer can drop to zero and navigators and sailors spend every waking minute of the day chasing any bit of wind that might help them move forward out of the hell-hole. The reality is a dummy could sail into the Doldrums blindfolded with no navigational aids or weather data and come out ahead of the experienced sailor with every piece of weather information at his fingertips! It is a lottery.

The goal? To break free of the Doldrums and catch the South East Trade winds that will propel the boat across the Equator, which is still 390 nautical miles away, and to the race mark off Fernando de Noronha (an archipelago of islands, 354km off the Brazilian coast).

Worst-case scenario? Think you are out, then see the Doldrums move south, so you are once again on the ‘wrong side’, retouching the effects of the North East Trade winds, and have to cross the Doldrums all over again. Hmm…this sums up Dongfeng’s day!

It’s feels as though nature is playing tricks on you. With the mainsail and boom slamming from side to side without the power of the wind to keep it set, the ‘puffs’ of wind that do materialise, generated by the cloud activity, are difficult to predict, hard to catch and even harder to manage. It’s hot, it’s sweaty and it’s frustrating. It is almost impossible to sleep due to the heat and the noise of the sails flapping from side to side is enough to send anyone round the bend.

Although Wikipedia claims the Doldrums can trap sailboats for ‘weeks on end’ times have (thankfully!) moved on. In centuries past it took sailboats a long time to hoist a sail by which time the wind they were chasing had moved on or disappeared completely at which point boats were left, once again, stranded. As mentioned by Volvo Ocean Race writer Jonathan Turner, ‘Delirium, starvation and cabin fever were all within touching distance for those men.’ Luckily for our team it only takes a few minutes or so to hoist a sail so at least we only spend days in the Doldrums and no longer weeks.

In effect, the seven-boat Volvo Ocean Race fleet has divided into three with the current beneficiaries – Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Team Brunel – positioned furthest west and making the most gain to date; Team Vestas Wind and Mapfre to the east; and in the middle Dongfeng, Alvimedica and Team SCA. The middle has not been the place to be – and Vestas in the east has surprised everyone by stretching away from an initially similarly eastern positioned Mapfre. So even the ‘classic’ case of being in the west is best hasn’t been fully true this time either, with the Danish team almost at the same latitude now as the leaders, and with a very advantageous wind angle to the Brazilian waypoint.

In today’s blog from the boat, Pascal Bidégorry jokes, 'We’re surrounded by dolphins who must be wondering what we’re doing here… they say 'Don’t stay here, guys, it’s not a good spot for a sailing boat!' Whereas Onboard Reporter Yann Riou expresses his frustration about Dongfeng’s position. 'When you look at the positions, you see boats who in theory are in the worst place, are somehow doing well, anyway – that’s annoying.' There was nothing in the weather information that showed passing to the West and the East were the right choices to make, the Doldrums is a question of pot luck to a certain degree, of which we seem to be flat out of at the Dongfeng Race Team