| It's all about seastate |
| Friday, 18 March 2005 |
Some relatively slow sailing lately on Doha 2006 as we continue to thread our way between the light winds to our north and the ice territory to the south. We are still sailing in a ridge of light winds extending down from Africa, but this is set to be replaced later tomorrow with northerly winds that are circulating around the big high pressure to the SE of Madagascar.
Looks like we are going to be close reaching towards the centre of the high, tacking around the centre and then reaching north to Mauritius in the Easterlies to the north of the high. It’s not the plan we wanted, as we had intended to go south of the high and stay in downwind conditions and sail around it to the east. But this ridge has slowed us so much that the high is going to be too elongated east-west by the time we get there and will make it unfeasible to go around it to the east. We would have to go half way to Australia and way past the Kerguelen Islands to make it around.
Any heavy air upwind or close reaching is always a danger for a big multihull, so we are going to have to be careful these next 5 days not to break the boat. At present we still have good downwind conditions as we head east, but a large northerly swell has been rolling in since last night and this is the outflow of the windy conditions ahead. Last night we spent some time on port gybe heading NE and with that same northerly swell we had to reduce sail to one reef, yankee and fill both aft ballast tanks to reduce pitching. We needed to keep the boatspeed to below 13 knots. On this other starboard gybe we can go full main, medium gennaker, no ballast and a boatspeed of 20 knots. It’s all about seastate on a boat as fast as this and as I have mentioned before the polar curve tables have to be ignored a lot of the time, you can only go as fast as conditions allow, and those conditions are constantly changing. Later tonight we will have to gybe so it will be reef in, gennaker down and yankee up before we even think about turning the boat.
It all makes it a fascinating task to get one of these boats safe and fast around the planet. Every day I am learning new things about the weather, about new ways to sail and manage the boat, and of course, about the ever-changing relationships and personalities on board!
It’s best not to think about the distance and time involved in a trip like this. Some of the team are constantly asking how far to go, what is the estimate of time to go, etc, whilst others just get on with life and sailing one watch at a time. Damian, who has a huge amount of experience, was happily surprised to find there was just over 5000 to go, he thought it was over 6000, as he was not watching the number obsessively. As they say a watched kettle never boils. We may as well enjoy this experience and get as much out of it as possible, because however far you might think we are from the finish, soon it will be over and all the complications of normal life will return. And, of course the pleasures too!
Brian
www.maxicatdoha.com
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