Update
Ingrid Abery captured this timeless image of the J-Class Ranger during this year’s Voiles de St Tropez. The J-Class is proving a competitive magnet for a growing number of superyacht owners, with two new builds well advanced in Holland and another in final development at Hoek Design. There has been ‘polite’ controversy within the class with some potential recruits questioning the need to include expensive interiors in what were only ever day-racers… However, this seems to be resolved and for now, at least, beds are in…
IT'S NOT NORMALLY LIKE THIS – Wouter Verbraak, Team Vestas Wind
Counting down the days to the start of Leg 1 from Alicante to Cape Town, the question repeated time and again was ‘Are you sure there is no western course?’ Groupama’s disastrous choice of the eastern route on the way south down Africa in the last race in 2011 was clearly still fresh on everybody’s mind, but Roger Badham (aka Clouds) was adamant that there was no choice. The pattern was so dominant that even five days before the start he said it was more than 90 per cent eastern course. And he was proven right. Before making our way south along the African coast, though, we first had to overcome the tricky winds in the Mediterranean; and immediately after the start a light sea breeze and weak easterly gradient had us all cruising gently along the Spanish coast until reaching the first big headland at Cartagena.
The next bay, however, between Cartagena and Cabo de Gata, had more hurdles. The bay is notorious for its light winds. To complicate matters further, a small low-pressure system was being dragged NE from the hot sands of the Moroccan desert, bringing with it not only a good deal of rain, but also thunder, lightning and some random breeze lines along with the squalls. So while it looked tempting to go for the pressure around this small low offshore, we knew that we somehow had to then get back inshore to be in at the cape at Cabo de Gata in time for the new winds to fill in from the west.
Tricky stuff, as none of the models were agreeing with each other, and the satellite pictures just showed a big band of clouds covering it all. A frenzy of sail changes, reefs and wind of everything from 3 to 24kt gave us all a good stir and got our heads firmly into the game whether we were ready for it or not. We all played the pressure and shifts with a few gybes as opinions differed as to what was more important…
The big game changer in this coastal racing for this edition has been the AIS data. With it mandatory to have your AIS turned on and transmitting all the time, everybody is now keeping a very
8 SEAHORSE
close eye on each other. As it also provides us with the GPS speed and course over ground of each of our competitors, we can quickly see who has the wind and who hasn’t. As a result, there is very little chance of making a big jump before the others get wind of it… please excuse the pun! No complaints, though, as AIS is an enormous step forward in safe navigation among the increasing number of fast-moving cargo vessels afloat on the sea today. Now if only the world’s fishermen all had AIS as well… So in the end we managed to get ourselves a small lead of three miles by extending further west before Cabo de Gata and being the first to pick up the shift to the new westerlies. A long beat in increasing westerly winds through the Alborean Sea followed with Mapfreshowing some good speed and taking over the lead for a while.
On the approach to the Strait of Gibraltar the strategic question is always which side of the fan to play. The westerlies do get funnelled significantly through the narrow gap, with big waves in the middle and slightly less breeze but better shifts and flat water out on each side. The conventional move here is to play the Moroccan side, and so the fleet charged off to the south- west. Or at least most of us did, as Team SCAproved us (and the theory) wrong by picking the other side and making a 10-mile gain in very short order.
Once out of the Strait, a front out in the Atlantic had us all booting it out west, before then tacking in NW winds to start to head south. This was the beginning of a week of playing headlands with funnelled breezes, as well as avoiding the risk of getting too close inshore and being gobbled up by the much lighter breezes. With the weather models having a lot of trouble predicting the erratic winds on the edge between the cold humid air of the Atlantic and the very warm and dry air from the Sahara, we ignored most of them, and went back to basics. Fun stuff.
Finally, with the trade winds slowly being restored in the west, we could make a move offshore at last. But things were not improving much, as now the Cape Verde Islands were right in the middle of our direct track to the Doldrums… The choice was
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