Ericssons arrival at Cape Horn slowed by lighter winds

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 16 Mar 2009
The leg leader in the Volvo Ocean race, Ericsson was expected to reach the turning point of Leg 5 at 1600hrs NZT tomorrow, Tuesday, however that ETA has been delayed due to ligh winds at the Cape..

The expected strong winds are not expected to impact the fleet as much as previously predicted, with the winds easing slightly but coming from a much more favourable direction, south west, instead of the previous north west to push the fleet towards the Cape.

According to the current positions at 0700hrs NZT,1800hrs 15 March GMT), the race leader Ericsson was about 730nm from the Cape. When she rounds she will have a lead of about 40nm over event leader Ericsson 4 with Puma Racing dropping back to 173nm behind the race leader.

UpdateAt 1900hrs on 16 March (0600hrs GMT), the arrival at Cape Horn appeared to have been delayed by eight hours or so, as light winds slowed the two Ericssons, and they looked set to roun the Horn in light airs - behind them a weather system with westerly winds of about 30kts would drive Green Dragon and Puma Racing around the most southerly landwark.

We will have an update at 0700hrs NZT on Tuesday 17 March.

At 0700hrs on 16 March NZT Ericsson 4 was 771nm from the Cape and Puma Racing 840nm.

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How to read these images

The boats have four digit codes as follows: ERT3 - Ericsson 3; ERT4 - Ericsson 4; GDRA - Green Dragon; ILMO - PUMA Racing; TELA - Telefonica Blue;

The wind is shown in barbed arrow format. The longer line is the wind direction, if it has one longer barb at right angles to the tail, then the wind strength is 10 kts, if there is a half size barb, further up the shaft then the strength is 15kts, two full size barbs indicate 20kts and so on.

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The images used in this story have been generated by www.iexpedition.org!Expedition which is a tactical and navigation software application which has been developed by veteran Volvo Ocean Race navigator and Whitbread winner, physicist Nick White, initially for his use in the 2001-2 Volvo Ocean Race with Team News Corp and the Stars & Stripes Americas Cup team.

Since then, www.iexpedition.org!Expedition has been continually refined by a core group of world-renowned navigators and two-time America’s Cup winning navigator Peter Isler has consulted closely in the development of the system. Expedition supports more instrument systems, is easier to use and has the most powerful and useful functions for the racing navigator.

Expedition is now has PredictWind integrated into the application as an option for PredictWind subscribers.

The wind data and prognosis used to produce these images also uses software developed by www.predictwind.com!PredictWind, an application developed by Jon Bilger a top NZ youth and Olympic sailor who turned his hand to wind and weather prediction, and helped Alinghi to their outstanding victories in the last two America's Cups.

Now that same technology is available to the weekend sailing and club racers, the cruising fraternity or professional sailors around the world. Select any region in the world of interest to you and www.predictwind.com!PredictWind will monitor the area for you and provide updated predictions on demand.

PredictWind is a subscription system, with a number of options. While some may feel the wind is free, the ability to get a five day detailed wind forecast for an area of interest creates great peace of mind, allowing forward planning and decision making to be made with some certainty. The time and money saved through being able to work with a high degree of confidence, is more than offset by the relatively small cost of the subscription.

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