This year’s Volvo fleet were straight into it at the start of the first long leg of the new course – from Lisbon to Cape Town. As Vestas 11th Hour Racing power away from Lisbon their boat is fully stacked and most of the crew are wearing all the kit they have got onboard. Breeze is good… and a start in these conditions sends a much ‘stronger’ message to the wider public of what this race is still all about
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The 2017-2018 Volvo Ocean Race presents different challenges from the last race three years ago: new crew mixes and new strategies prompted by a different course. And then there is the science… Chris Bedford, Simon Fisher and Mark Towill
Seahorse:How did the welcome reintroduction of longer oceanic legs affect the different strategy roles in your team? Simon Fisher (SiFi): Even though there is more Southern Ocean in this edition I’m not sure we will see a fundamental change in how people approach the race overall. We try to approach each leg in the same way irrespective of length, building a strong strategy where we feel we have confidence in the forecast, and to consider all the potential options. If I feel we have had no surprises out on the water I know we have done a good job onshore! However, the race is busier than ever in
terms of schedule and there is not a lot of down time, so having good shore support is more important than ever. Here at Vestas 11th Hour Racing we are following a path similar to how we worked with Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing last time. I am lucky to be surrounded by a strong team with Chris Bedford as our meteorologist once again who works remotely from the US. Anderson Reggio is supporting me on site as a shore- based navigator, involving everything from weather to performance analysis and gener- ally taking stuff off my plate and staying on
42 SEAHORSE
top of the evolving situation with the weather while we fulfil our obligations on the water. Hopefully it also means I can stay rested and spend a bit of time with my family too! With Vestas as a partner we have access to some additional meteorological resources which makes for an exciting collaboration. SH:With a small crew, will you share the onboard routeing role more than before? SF: Thanks to the rules allowing additional female crew we are actually fortunate to have one more on the boat this time around. It’s fair to say, though – nine isn’t a lot and I try hard to contribute on deck as much as possible. I guess one of my strengths as a navigator is I have also done this race as a helm and trimmer, which means I can get stuck into the sailing too. This also helps me make better decisions as a navigator as you are more in tune with boat performance. Having to contribute to a watch gives
your day some structure and, although I still get less sleep than everyone else, it does allow me to get some planned rest and a rhythm to the decision-making process onboard. Generally when people get overtired they are more likely to make bad decisions. Although I do the bulk of analysing the weather, I share the decision-making with Charlie [Enright] and for us that works well – but it’s up to the team and the people onboard whether it’s better to have more or fewer people involved. I’d be selling the rest of the team short if I didn’t add that their input is important. SH:Does the combination of small crews and long legs prompt a different approach to weather and risk taking? SF: In my mind ‘risk management’ is central to offshore navigation. Basically we are always weighing up the risk versus reward of any potential decision – your position on a leg, in the overall race and your confidence in any situation will always put you some- where slightly different on the scale. If you
are fast it makes your life a lot easier and you can generally be more conservative (which as a navigator is great). I’m excited to see how people approach this race. I think there is a bit more depth in the fleet this time and a lot more experience with the boats; everyone should be closer now. With that in mind, using the conservative approach it might be harder to score consistently strong results so you might see more risk taking, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. There are some double-points legs, which is great if you win but double-bad if you lose. So it remains to be seen if people will elect to take more risk or scrap it out in the pack. SH: The return of Vestas as sponsor with their own enormous met resources must have some influence on their ‘home’ team. SF: We are pretty excited about the resources Vestas bring. We are able to get access to more weather data, run high-reso- lution models and do detailed CFD model- ling which hopefully gives us an advantage over the others! This is all very computer hungry and time intensive, so we are grateful to Vestas for making this available to us. It’s interesting too, since as competitive people we are always looking to develop; this is a good opportunity to do that. SH:On which legs do you anticipate conditions may be measurably different? SF: Leg 2 to Cape Town has plenty of potential to take on a different guise this time with Fernando de Noronha [an island off the northeast coast of Brazil] no longer part of the course. It opens up a lot of options to cross the ITCZ further east and pursue a more upwind route to Cape Town. I hope not, though! Chris Bedford: I completely concur with SiFi with respect to Leg 2. The removal of Fernando de Noronha as a waypoint has completely changed that leg. There are inter- esting opportunities that were not available
JESUS RENEDO/VOR
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