Volvo Ocean Race- Racing between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Andy Rice on 25 Nov 2014 Team Alivimedica skipper Charlie Enright and navigator Will Oxley sat with Andy Rice to assess Leg 2 before the start in Cape Town. Here is the second part of the Leg Two analysis.

Speaking before the start in Cape Town, Will Oxley was looking at the prospect of a tropical cyclone developing right in their path, as they make their way north past Madagascar. 'We’re looking at a cyclone that is forecast to initially head south and then head south-west towards Mauritius and Reunion. Now, another complexity of this leg is the risk of pirates off the coast of Somalia, and the Horn of Africa, even if it is greatly reduced compared with a few years ago. So the race committee has given us a large exclusion zone to keep us out of that area, to keep us away from pirates.

'However, with a tropical storm coming in, in the Southern hemisphere you want to be on the Western side, because you're downwind, as opposed to being on the Eastern side where the storm is coming at you. Not only are you going upwind, but because the thing is moving towards you the wind speeds are accelerated. If you've got 50 knots of wind, plus the system is moving at 10 knots, you've got 60 knots of wind. So we could be in a situation where we're trying to ease our way around this tropical storm and be pinned against this exclusion zone. That's quite a concern at the moment.'

Enright says: 'It definitely will make things more exciting. On this leg there's an exclusion zone because of pirates, and that puts us between a rock and hard place, the way the tropical storm is transiting towards the west. We have the option of taking a nice downwind path to the west of it, close to the exclusion zone. But if gets too close and moves too far to the west, then we're forced to go upwind through the thing. We've got two guys on board - Dave Swete and Ryan Houston - who sailed upwind through a tropical storm last time, and they ended up vacationing in Madagascar, so we'll try to avoid that.'

Swete and Houston were racing on board Team Sanya and a bold move into the teeth of a tropical storm saw Sanya seize the lead, only for their rig to suffer a serious failure that forced the boat out of the leg. Three years later, and Team Alvimedica could be faced with the same risk/reward dilemma.

Even if they make it safely past the first one, Oxley says that there’s the possibility of a second tropical storm developing further north. But if there’s a silver lining to all these stormy predictions, it’s this: 'One benefit could be that the storms help us get through the double Doldrums, which are a unique feature of the Indian Ocean.'

Eventually the fleet does a left-hand turn at the top of the Indian Ocean and into the final stretch down the Persian Gulf. After all the trials and tribulations of potentially too much wind, the final obstacle could be not enough. The final race to the finish in Abu Dhabi could be a drifter.

Leg 2 is only set to last a month, but for Team Alvimedica and the rest of the fleet, it holds a lifetime of adventure.