Volvo Ocean Race- Chisnell comments on Leg 4 Singapore to Qingdao

by Mark Chisnell on 16 Jan 2009
Volvo Ocean Race: It was my first taxi from the hotel to the Race Village, not long after arriving in Singapore. Noticing the logo on my uniform shirt, the driver was very anxious to tell me that this was a bad time of year to sail to China… very windy, he said, shaking his head, solemnly.

And that pretty much sums it up - in terms of the climate there isn’t a great deal more to say about Leg 4. Like Leg 3, this is another west to east leg, sailing in just one of the earth’s climate zones. These lie in distinct bands, horizontally and looping the globe, running out from the Equator to the Poles in a mirror image. And again, as with Leg 3, this leg will be contested in the band of the north-east monsoon. This is the north-easterly breeze created by the clockwise flow around the huge high pressure that builds up over central Asia during the winter.

A quick look at Matthew Fontaine Maury’s progeny, the Pilot Chart for the Indian Ocean in January (it’s a PDF, so it’s a slow download, and it comes with a technical content warning…), shows us that the north-east monsoon blows pretty much directly from Qingdao down the South China Sea, and across to Malaysia and Singapore - so the fleet will be going upwind the whole way. And with the mean daily maximum temperature in Qingdao around five degrees centigrade, this is the leg that’s got the potential to make the Southern Ocean look like a soft option.

Things might not start so badly though - the ITCZ, or Doldrums belt is mobile, shifting north to south, and often Singapore lies inside it – meaning that there’s not much wind, except in the clouds and squalls. These were the conditions that were expected to dominate the in-port racing. But for a while now, the north-east monsoon has comfortably reached down to the latitude of Singapore, and we’ve had strong winds through the race village all week. However, the latest predictions from race forecaster, Jennifer Lilly, indicate that the wind will ease a little, and may shift enough to the west of north for the fleet to reach east along the Singapore Strait, before they start the beat into the South China Sea.

Once into open water, the strategy should be straightforward for the first 1400 miles or so – utilise the shifting wind direction to make the best speed up the course. One variable that will be important to watch in this battle is VMC (Velocity Made to Course) in the Data Centre. It’s an average calculation of Boat Speed (BS) multiplied by the cosine of the angle between the course to the waypoint (BRG_WPT) and the boat’s actual heading (HDG). It’s a measure of the speed (in knots) at which the boat has travelled in the direction of the next waypoint. And the boat with the highest average VMC will have spent the most time on the right tack.

While the basic strategy will be simple, complexity will be added to the mix by geography – there’s plenty of land both on, and constraining the edges of, the playing field, as you can see from this Deckman for Windows chart of the course. And not just the obvious parts either, there are the sparsely-surveyed and politically disputed Spratly Islands to negotiate – amongst others - for anyone that gets into the south-eastern corner of the race track.

But the first major strategic decision will be whether or not to go through the Taiwan Strait. The advantage of going through the Strait, to the west of Taiwan, is that the north-east monsoon tends to blow from the north, straight down the Yellow Sea, before bending round the coast of China as it enters the East China and then the South China Sea, slowly becoming a north-easterly wind. The place to be to take advantage of this gradual, geographic shift in wind direction is on the coast of China – and that means going through the Taiwan Strait.

But you need to balance a couple of other factors against this – and the first is the Japan Current, or Kuro Shio (Black Tide). This starts off the southern tip of Taiwan and flows north-eastward up the east coast, giving up to a knot more favourable current than you see on the west coast of Taiwan - while on the Chinese mainland shore, the current is actually flowing the other way.

The second thing to consider is the frequency of strong winds around Taiwan – 30 knot winds blow at an average of one day in three in the Strait, slightly less on the east coast. But these are Volvo Open 70s, and they don’t really like going upwind – this is a case where more breeze is not necessarily faster. In fact, it may be slower, as the crews have to back off the pace to keep the boat in one piece.

These factors come together when you consider the sea state. When the wind is blowing in the opposite direction to the current, as it will be around Taiwan, then it whips up a much worse sea state than when the current is flowing with the wind direction. The combination of a knot and a half of favourable Black Tide, and a 30 knot north-easterly monsoon wind, could be boat breaking.

When, or if, they negotiate this combination of elements to get north of Taiwan, the navigators will have to watch out for depressions forming on the Chinese mainland and heading east for Japan. That can mean strong winds, thick cloud, snow or heavy rain – if and when one of these fronts sweeps across the fleet, it will really test both crews and boats. And that brings us to the final consideration for this leg – getting there in one piece.

Clearly, going upwind for a couple of weeks in anything up to 40 knots is going to be a serious test of endurance. But it gets worse, once they get north of Taiwan and up into the East China and then the Yellow Sea, the water temperature is going to drop quickly – less than 5 degrees centigrade by the time they reach Qingdao. And with night-time air temperatures regularly dropping below zero, and the apparent wind much higher because they are going upwind, it could be much colder than the Southern Ocean. There’s a real risk of ice forming on the deck and rigging, freezing winches and blocks solid.

Then there’s the darkness – this leg will be racing into winter, unlike the old Southern Ocean Legs which had the benefit of long summer daylight hours. By the end of Leg 4 there will be 14 hours of darkness in every 24 – when you can’t see the waves, the wind on the water, and sometimes even your hand in front of your face. Cold, dark, wet, windy and upwind – my feeling is that anyone who maintains the capacity to race at 100% efficiency all the way to the finish line will be on the podium.

If that turns out to be the case, the key skill for this leg might well be good old fashioned seamanship - choking back the competitive instincts and nursing the boat through the rough stuff. At least, that’s what my taxi driver seemed to be saying – have you ever tried disagreeing with a taxi driver…?

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