10:57 AM Fri 12 Dec 2008 GMT
If Leg 1 of the Volvo Ocean race was the old friend that you don't initially recognise, and Leg 2 the glamorous, dark-eyed stranger casting seductive gazes in your direction at a party, then Leg 3 is the alien that turned up at the end of the latest Indiana Jones movie - this really is a place we haven't been before (and now I've thrashed that metaphor to death, I promise not to use it again).
Specifically, the Volvo Ocean Race hasn't sailed the 1,950 miles eastward from Cochin to Singapore before, but there is a more general difference. Both of the previous two legs have run largely from north to south, or south to north. That means that they have been crossing the earth's climate zones, which lie in distinct bands, horizontally and looping the globe, running out from the Equator to the Poles in a mirror image.
But this time, we're racing from west to east, and so we're running along the climate bands, instead of crossing them. In fact, we're going to be running along the southern edge of the north-east monsoon. This is the north-easterly breeze created by the clockwise flow around the huge high pressure that builds up over central Asia during the winter (and my thanks to both Ericsson's navigational consultant, Mike Quilter, and Telefonica's meteorologist, Roger Badham, for helping out with the links and climatology).
So, there's also a general difference to all previous legs of the Volvo Ocean Race, which have always done their west to east racing in the Southern Ocean or North Atlantic - downwind, in the cold, along the storm track. This time, we're going upwind, in the heat, and in a region of steady wind. Or at least, it would be a region of steady wind, if we were a bit further north .
But first, the fleet have to get to the north-easterly wind, which doesn't make it over the land mass of the Indian sub-continent. As we saw at the end of Leg 2, Cochin and the west coast are in an area of predominantly light wind at this time of year. Once again, the fleet will be relying on the daytime sea breeze, the night-time land breeze (a Katabatic or drainage wind), and any helpful clouds that come their way. So, we can expect plenty of action in the mornings and evenings (local time) as the boats have to transit between the land and sea breezes.
At the moment, the forecast is for a light, five to seven knot sea breeze for the start, but check out the updates from Race Forecasters, Jennifer Lilly and Matt Sanders, as we get closer to the gun. Whoever works the local breezes best, and moves south fastest, is going to get a serious jump on the rest of the fleet once they get out of the massive wind shadow of India. As we saw at the end of Leg 2, the north-easterly breeze squirts through the gap between India and Sri Lanka, and it should prove a big advantage for the boat that reaches it first.
The next obstacle is Sri Lanka itself, with a line set by the Race Office to keep them about 50 miles away from the south coast - another area with some pirate 'issues'. But they probably won't want to get too close anyway, as Sri Lanka also creates a wind shadow, with light breeze to the south-west of it. Once the fleet have negotiated that, the race course is then a straight-line all the way to the scoring waypoint, a line running north from the Indonesian island of Pulau We.
This is when the north-eastern monsoon becomes a big factor in the routeing choices - at this time of year, the north-easterly fades out right about on the direct course between the tip of Sri Lanka and the entrance to the Strait of Malacca, the channel between Malaysia and the island of Sumatra, that will take them down to the finish at Singapore.
How do I know this? The granddaddy of all modern weather routing - the wind and current chart, for which we have an American, Matthew Fontaine Maury to thank. Banished by the US Navy (for the combination of a lame leg and magazine articles critical of his superiors) to the Depot of Charts and Instruments, Maury found himself surrounded by the amassed sailing logs and records of the Navy's warships.
Maury and his staff geographically collated the information on wind speed, direction and current, and then represented it pictorially on charts of the world's oceans. The first Wind and Current Chart was produced in 1847, and while they were initially only available to the US Navy, the waterfront was a small place. The word started to get out, passage records started to tumble as skippers took advantage of the weather patterns that Maury's charts made clear for the first time, and soon everyone was in on the act.
And even in this era of global GRIB files and weather models, the hydrographers still produce a version of Maury's charts - and the one for the Indian Ocean in December is right here (it's a PDF, so it's a slow download, and it comes with a severe technical content warning, but if you're interested in this stuff, it's pretty cool.).
So in general - and these charts are based on long-term averages - there will always be more wind to the north on the leg across from Sri Lanka to Sumatra. The two questions the navigators will be asking when they look at the weather forecast charts will be - how much more wind, and how many extra miles do they have to sail to get to it?
The other factor on this leg will be the possibility of a tropical cyclone - it sounds scary, and they can be, but like northern hemisphere low pressure systems, they come in all shapes and sizes.
And generally, they don't tend to head south out of the Bay of Bengal at this time of year - as you can see in the bottom left hand corner of the routeing chart. So the fleet might have to deal with it, but it's unlikely. and now I've said that, it pretty much guarantees it'll happen, right?
But let's assume that it doesn't - the fleet will be looking at maybe three or four days of reaching at quite a tight True Wind Angle (TWA in the Data Centre) to get to Sumatra. These are the conditions in which the two Telefonica boats have previously been at their best, so it should be an opportunity for Bouwe Bekking and his crew on the Blue boat to maintain their challenge to Ericsson 4.
The scoring gate points are awarded at the end of this section, as the fleet cross the line north from Pulau We. And it will be good to get some points in the bag, because next up is the right turn down into the Strait of Malacca, and from here on, things get pretty interesting - not to say . random.
Firstly, the Race Office have set rules to confine them to the Malaysian side of the Strait, which is one of the world's busiest shipping channels, so all the traffic laws have to be observed. Then, we're back under the influence of the coast - so there will be sea and land breezes to utilise, as well as the north-easterly monsoon trying to find its way over the Malaysian peninsula, and puffing down valleys and round mountains whenever it gets the opportunity.
Next up, thunderstorms occur on average almost every other day in this part of the world, so reading the clouds correctly will be vital. And if all that isn't enough, there can be up to a couple of knots of tide running back and forth through the Strait - it'll be with them for six hours, and then against them for the next six hours.
Frankly, balancing all these competing costs and benefits against each other to come up with the best overall strategy is going to be a constantly shifting nightmare, and no one is going to get it right all the time. The crews will need to accept slipping backwards on the snakes as calmly as roaring forwards on the ladders, and hope that in the end, just enough luck breaks their way .
www.volvooceanrace.org
by Mark Chisnell
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