Day 5 – The safety car is out

Sailing events are forever labeling themselves the ‘F1 of sailing’ but Volvo has taken it a step further by introducing the marine equivalent of the safety car. A cold front extending north-south across the fleet containing rain, little wind and a 180 degree windshift is moving slowly east at about 12 knots.

Sadly this means that we sail into it at 20 knots, the wind dies, we stop until the front moves forward and we regain the wind from the old direction. All the time this is happening, those boats behind pile into the back of us whilst we are held up by the ‘weather safety car’.

Only when the front slows down or if we get some magic gust from a rain cloud or something similar will we be able to pop through to the east side and away. Sanya was over 60 miles behind us yesterday and now we can see them right up behind us.

It’s always nice to have a boat in sight but it’s annoying to have lost such a big margin so quickly. The only real question for navigators and skippers is where to position yourself on the north / south axis in the line up behind the ‘safety car’.

If you can get through it fast then north should be good, if it takes longer then south could be stronger. We are currently trying to slide south a bit to get in touch with Puma and Camper and minimise any leverage they have over us.