Auckland Fiji Race many options for naviguessers as Camper reports

by Richard Gladwell on 6 Jun 2011 The Volvo 70, Camper sailed by Emirates Team NZ continues to lead the Auckland-Musket Cove, Fiji Race by a margin which has not really changed significantly overnight and remains at 18nm, on the basis of who is closest to Fiji.

The wind predictions have changed for the race area and the stronger winds earlier predicted to greet TeamVodafoneSailing to the east of the fleet at around noon today will not kick in for another 12 hours - around midnight tonight, caused by a high pressure area to the east of NZ moving away more quickly than expected.

The route projections show that Camper with 968nm to sail at 0800hrs this morning is best to stay initially on the rhumb line and then move west in the later stages of the trip which is now projected to take around 3 days 8hrs. Probably because of the volatility of the wind prognosis she will stay closer to the rhumb line than make a move either side.

The Bakewell-White design Wired is in a similar position to Camper in terms of route options, even though she is more east. She was 29nm behind Camper at 0800hrs this morning.

Aboard TeamVodafoneSailing, it is time for the big call - do they continue to head east, look for the stronger winds and then have a fast ride into Musket Cove - despite sailing more than 200nm further than the more direct course?

Or do they come back into the rhumb line and follow the monohulls before working out to the west.

Our pick is that she will stay east, maybe not as extreme as the blue track suggests in her routing options, and take a tradeoff on the greater distance (1480nm) on the blue track - driven by one wind data feed used by Predictwind or if she followed the red track, her distance sailed to Musket Cove is only 1285nm.

The time taken under either track is not dissimilar - 2 days 20 hours for the longer route and 2 days 22hours for the shorter - meaning that the longer route has stronger winds for a longer period of time. On this basis she would finish about 8-10 hours ahead of the Volvo 70.

Will Oxley, navigator on CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand, reports on progress on the Auckland-Musket Cove race:

33 42S 175 52E, NW wind 12 knots, Boat speed 11 -12 knots. Heading north.

Fiji Day1: As dawn breaks after our first night at sea things are good on board CAMPER. We are heading north and the weather is getting warmer and I am pretty happy about that. Naturally, the weather models have differed slightly from reality and we used the coastal observations and our eyes to work our way north in the afternoon and overnight . I’m starting to get to know the north-east New Zealand coast and this will be helpful for the finish of leg 4 of the Volvo Ocean Race into Auckland.

As I write this we are still over 20nm ahead of the trimaran Vodafone which is a bit of a surprise, but I imagine once we hit the trades proper they should come smoking past us.

Until then though, there is a high pressure system to negotiate, and so hopefully we can manage to wriggle our way through it in good enough shape to at least make the competition closer for both of us. We had a trough lines pass over us in the night resulting in plenty of 'water from the sky' and significant changes in wind strength and direction.

Our radar overlaid on the navigation package did an excellent job in helping us anticipate the wind changes and negotiate our way between the cells. This has also been a good opportunity to try all of our navigation systems in a race situation and it is all working well.

Life is a little different with three 'extras' on board. Our team photographer, one of our sponsors from Camper and Grant Dalton are enjoying themselves. Dalts is starting to look a little twitchy though, as he is forcibly weaned off his mobile phone.

The forecast is for mod to light WNW winds through till Tuesday morning then we have to negotiate the high to somehow end up on the north of it by early Wednesday and into some decent SE trade winds for our final 36 hours or so into Fiji. Bring on the sunshine!

Progress can be viewed on the Vodafone Play website http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/TeamVodafone?fullscreen!click_here to go straight to the full screen version. If you are using on an iPhone, please tilt the device horizontally to get the ideal view of both screens. You can wind back the display to follow her progress on the map and accompanying time-lapse pictures as she starts, and then exits the Hauraki Gulf. Now TVS has left 3G coverage only her boat position and actual speed is shown on the display.

Or, you can follow the whole fleet on the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron website www.rnzys.org.nz or http://live.adventuretracking.com/aucklandtofiji2011!click_here to go straight to the Yellowbrick tracker and zoom in to see the individual race yacht's positions updated every 20 minutes.