Volvo Ocean Race - On Board- Welcome to the Southern Ocean - Day 19

by Volvo Ocean Race OBR's on 1 Nov 2014 The Volvo Ocean race On Board Reporters update from the Southern Ocean on leg 1, Day 19

The best of the OBR's blogs plus the Latest and Uncut Video - October 31,2014



Like flipping a light switch. Off to on in so much as an instant, the anticipated westerlies of the South Atlantic have finally arrived—28 knots now—and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly life onboard can change. One minute you’re enjoying a nice casual sleep, twelve knots of wind and comfortable in your sleeping bag. Things are pretty mellow, tranquillo as Charlie says. Your iPod probably ran out of battery while you were dreaming, dreaming about home, maybe a steak in Cape Town. It really doesn’t matter—you are dreaming.

Something wakes you and you open your eyes and ears to a very different, very alarming setting. It’s pretty chaotic, actually. Your eyes adjust to the darkness, slowly, with the only light coming from red headlamps of the guys doing very much the same all around you. As the boat careens through the night like an out of control freight train, carving a trench through the ocean while obliterating every bit of water in its way, it is loud—constant loud like the rumble of distant thunder. You can actually hear the speed, feel the speed. Like accelerating in a sports car with your eyes closed, off-road, in the rain.

People on deck are yelling, bags down below are flying, waves are shooting through the hatch, and all you and everyone else just rising from their bunks are trying to do is wake up, simply get to your feet. And the kettle’s just tumbled to leeward because the boat is on its side. You hear it clank loudly, twice, on the way down and it lands in the [rapidly filling] bilge with an audible splash—a noise so annoying, so bothersome in principle--that you know it will someday occupy your nightmares. Gonna have to go get that. Like, right now.

Amory Ross, OBR
Team Alvimedica

We’re past the 40th parallel… technically in the Roaring Forties. It’s not roaring at full strength yet, but this evening a frontal system rolled through an the wind speeds have been in the 25 knots range all night.

I knew it was blowing hard when Chuny came back and, out of breath, says, 'This is OK, no?' and before I can answer starts throwing all the heavy stacking gear both under and in my bunk because we were nose-diving into the waves and needed the aft weight.

Still, a nice sailing day up until dinnertime. The heavy breeze is welcome.

Matt Knighton, OBR
Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

Late last night I signed off with quite the sailing story. I’ll follow this up more now in detail that I’ve been educated by the crew. We were all waiting at 19:00 UTC for the six-hourly scheds, these position reports are massive news onboard, it allows us to gauge our performance and it tells us where the rest of the fleet is.

Five minutes before the email had been received, Abu Dhabi popped up on AIS on our computer screens, shortly after it appeared out of the grey horizon passing only four miles just ahead. This was a tactical game Abu Dhabi played, six hours of no one knowing their position and they end up right in front of us before the sched. We think the east wasn’t paying off for them so they joined our line to the west to get to the south to the frontal systems quicker.

The day brought a slight split in the trio up front, we are pushing hard to get south and be the first into the front coming possibly tomorrow. The others are further to our east. It’s all snakes and ladders now, Gain, Loss, Gain, Loss! Its hard to follow, I wonder what it’s like for you couch surfers at home. I bet some are getting less sleep than us, I know my Mom will be and probably all the mothers of their sons aboard too.

Brian Carlin, OBR
Team Vestas Wind



First Albatross
This morning we saw our first albatross. Surprising, because we were only at 32 degrees south. We wondered what it was doing there… Enjoying a holiday up north? We didn’t see any other.

A first for…
Tomorrow, Eric, Thomas, Wolf and Horace will sail for the first time by 40 degrees south. Even though they’re focused on the racing, Eric and Thomas are not taking this lightly. It’s something you want to do when you’re an offshore racer. It’s not the same for Wolf and Horace. We can see that the Roaring Forties legend didn’t really make it to China. Up to us to change this!

Yann Riou, OBR
Dongfeng Race Team

Twenty days ago, the idea of being at sea for twenty days was a bit daunting. Twenty days without a shower, twenty days without a run, twenty days with only a few changes of clothes. Twenty days without ice cream, steak, nor spinach.

'Here we are twenty days into it. On day 3 it was really like holy cow, we still have a long way to go, but now it’s 20 days. It helps really being in the moment, one day at a time,' Sally said.

Sally is right. Out here, it really is one day at a time. It’s one 'sked' (aka position report) at a time. It’s sailing with the conditions you have, and doing the ultimate best with them. It’s not thinking about day 26 and preparing the sails and boat for day 26 because then you’ll be slow. Out here, you have to deal with today.

Corinna Halloran, OBR
Team SCA

We’ve been thinking about all that has happened so far… And we realised that, not being in a confortable situation at the start has placed us where we are now. At least this is what Iker told me today, and that helped me understanding how and why we ended up in this situation.

Crossing the Doldrums was difficult cause the west paid off and caused Brunel and Abu Dhabi to open a gap.

Then, we chose to sail close to land, off the Brazilian coast, which is usually not that difficult, but the wind was really not consistent. We thought it was a safer option because the St Helena High was placed south at that time, but we didn’t end up sailing fast enough. Basically, after the Doldrums, we’ve been in the wrong place.

We are far from the end of the race and we can still move up. We have six days of sailing ahead of us and we won’t let go.

Francisco Vignale, OBR
MAPFRE