Konyukhov keeps weather eye on Southern Ocean

by Event Media on 24 Jan 2008 As Fedor Konyukhov loaded last minute stores aboard his Open 85 monohull Trading Network Alye Parusa in Albany in preparation for the start on Saturday of his Antarctica Cup Racetrack record attempt, the Russian was keeping a keen eye on the weather and ice flow predictions.

Lee Bruce, the American weather router charged with keeping Fedor on the north side of the vicious clockwise rotating low pressure systems that sweep around the Globe between the ‘Roaring Forty’ and ‘Screaming Sixty’ latitudes reported today.

‘The weather patterns are in constant flux, and often running at breakneck speed. Trading Network Alye Parusa doesn’t have the luxury of enough speed to stay with a pattern for long, so Fedor will always be looking over his shoulder for the next shift.’ He said, adding. ‘The challenge will be to keep Fedor in a ribbon of favourable wind, while then lows and highs trace ever-changing tracks along the way. High-pressure systems will threaten to slow Fedor to a crawl, but strong low-pressure centres will create dangerously high wind speeds. So, the trick is to find the right track that avoids these extremes.’

The weather charts predict the state of play for the start on 26 January. The thin black isobar lines mark areas of equal pressure; the tighter the spacing, the higher the wind speed. Black arrows show the movement of the Highs and Lows over a 48 period. Green arrows show the basic wind direction.

Of equal concern is the amount of ice now in the southern seas, as witnessed by the Barcelona Race fleet as they flashed across the Pacific towards Cape Horn earlier this month. The big difference for Fedor is that instead of turning north around this infamous Cape into the relatively sheltered waters of the Atlantic, the 56 year old Russian adventurer will continue eastwards across ‘uncharted territory’ as far a race tracks go between the longitudes 60W and 20E.

The only man to have sailed these waters before is West Australian Jon Sanders who is flying down to Albany on Friday to provide Fedor with advice and encouragement, and will join thousands of spectators expected along Marine Drive and foreshore on Saturday to watch Fedor set out at 10:30am from King George Sound.

Since much of the ice, particularly the table-sized chunks between 2 and 5 m (7 and 16 ft) in diameter known as ‘Bergy bits’ or ‘Growlers’ will not be picked up by Trading Network Alye Parusa’s radar, Fedor is relying on the Canadian ice tracking service C-CORE to monitor the flows. They use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the ENVISAT satellite to provide “pre-sector” iceberg reconnaissance for the portions of the South Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans. SAR data can be collected day or night regardless of cloud cover, and is particularly useful for monitoring remote locations like the Antarctica Cup Yacht Racetrack.

At present, there is one iceberg within the race track (A-53A - 55.15S, 38.20W) but others are close enough to move across Fedor’s path during the course of this 2 month long 14,000 mile record attempt.
Last night, Fedor and his Trading Network Alye Parusa team were feted at a Civic Reception in Albany