Vendee Globe – Day 8 – Fleet on the move, but Doldrums ahead
by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World NZ 18 Nov 07:32 PST
16-17 November 2024
Sam Goodchild – Vendée Globe © Pierre Bouras / TR Racing
After a few days of experiencing an unusual patch of light winds, the 38-boat Vendée Globe Race fleet is now sailing at different speeds. Only a few of the IMOCA60s are achieving double-digit VMG (Velocity Made Good) speeds, with the highest VMG over the last 24 hours being 12.7 knots reported by Nicholas Lunven (Holcim PRB).
The importance of this statistic is that, while the fleet is happy to be moving, no one is making a significant break ahead of the others.
Ahead lies an area sailors refer to as “The Doldrums” and to meteorologists as the “Intertropical Convergence Zone.” There, the race could potentially restart.
We can observe the ITCZ waiting on the weather routing from Predictwind. Vendée Globe race control indicates that the fleet is anticipated to enter the Doldrums in about 24 hours. This is based on conditions in a year of unseasonal weather.
Reviewing accounts from previous races around the world shows that some yachts pass through the region in 25-30 knots of wind while others transition from the expected trade winds of the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere in just eight hours, while some drift for days.
In a non-stop race like the Vendée Globe, this is the first real chance for competitors to gain a significant race-winning advantage.
The fleet is still divided into two or three groups, with a distance of 800 nautical miles covering the entire fleet.
The Predictwind Weather Routing takes up to six customized feeds and utilizes them to determine the best route for each boat, using a polar performance chart to choose the optimal points of sailing to reach the next waypoint in the least amount of time.
The Vendée Globe Race uses a different method—calculating the distance remaining for each competitor in the race, the one with the shortest distance declared the winner. In other global races, this method has proven to be flawed in accurately predicting the winning boat or the best course.
As seen in the routing diagrams, two strategic paths are evident, depending on how a competitor has positioned themselves during the first week, which has been characterized by light conditions.
Jean Le Cam has been leading the race for several days. The oldest competitor, sailing an IMOCA60 with a daggerboard, chose to head east, nearly to the African coast, and has been navigating along the edge of the Sahara desert. Le Cam, along with New Zealand’s Conrad Colman, who is even further inshore, has only one option left. They must continue sailing directly south, passing through the exclusion zones of Mauritania and the Cape Verde Islands, hoping to break through the Doldrums and then catch the available wind—approximately 12 knots—before encountering stronger breezes.
The weather routing forecasts predict a challenging journey for both, estimating it will take them 19-20 days to reach the Ice Gate entrance off the Cape of Good Hope. However, weather data can change, and there remains over 4,000 nautical miles to cover on the first leg to the southern tip of Africa.
The other group, led by the current race leader on both systems, Paul Goodchild, is more centered and sailing west towards Fortaleza on the Brazilian coast, aiming to enter the trade winds around the South Atlantic High for a swift passage into the Southern Ocean. He is projected to reach the entrance to the Ice Gate Zone in 12-14 days.
The Ice Gate is now visible in the Predictwind Routing. It circumnavigates the Southern Ocean and serves as a safety measure to keep competitors out of the deep southern waters. Most will navigate close to the Ice Gate to ensure they travel the shortest permissible distance on this segment of the course.
