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Image courtesy Offshore Challenges. Sailing at breathtaking speed: This point of sail is what Open 60 skippers adore. Unfortunately for those on-board, leg three of the EDS Atlantic Challenge was upwind most of the time. Kingfisher, pictured in the foreground, won the leg convincingly after her nearest rival Sill suffered forestay damage east of Newfoundland. True, this boat performs well to windward compared to other Open 60s, but there is no doubt that skipper Ellen MacArthur, and co-skipper Nick Maloney, worked hard to pull off their win. A tale of two routes East-west
Atlantic crossing: Will you go north August
8, 2001 The trans-Atlantic yacht race from Europe to America is a celebrated thing. The east-west crossing from Portsmouth to Newport - the solo trans-Atlantic event - being the most famous. Only last year Chay Blyth and his Challenge Foundation used a similar route - ending at Boston rather than Newport - as the first leg of their notorious 'round-the-world-the-wrong-way race for a fleet of identical steel-hulled monohulls. So it was no wonder that this same Challenge Foundation incorporated a similar east-west crossing in its 2001 EDS Atlantic Challenge - essentially a summer of sailing the North Atlantic for Open 60 class monohulls. The event is the first major crewed event in the history of this class. After all, these boats were designed for solo races like the Vendee Globe. They are also optimised for downwind reaching, not upwind bashing - which makes the east -west Atlantic crossing such a drama! After a couple of short, brutal North Sea and English Channel legs (St Malo to Cuxhaven, Cuxhaven to Portsmouth - the latter a real upwind bash) the Open 60s sailed out of Portsmouth bound for Baltimore, Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay. EDS Atlantic Challenge 2001 Image courtesy Offshore Challenges. The five legs of the EDS Atlantic Challenge are shown here: St Malo to Cuxhaven (with a detour to Hamburg), Cuxhaven to Portsmouth, Portsmouth to Baltimore - the leg we are discussing here, Baltimore to Boston and Boston to St Malo. Upwind or down? The rhumb line to Baltmore lies just to the north of the Azores, but to take the direct route would be competition suicide thanks to light winds directly under the mid Atlantic High. Another name for this phenomenon is the Azores High, and by sailing close to these islands, a yacht is likely to find itself without wind. So the choice is to go north - beating to windward for two weeks against cold and stormy seas flowing over the top of the mid Atlantic High - or go south and surf the trade winds circulating around the high's equatorial flank, at the expense of a lot of extra miles. Easy choice for some! But for those who choose the sun, there is one big ask: Can favourable downwind conditions more than make-up for the increased distance demanded by taking the southern sunny route? In the case of the EDS Atlantic Challenge, the crew of AlphaGraphics can answer that question - but more on that in a minute. If you recall the last solo trans-Atlantic race, won by Ellen MacArthur and Kingfisher in the monohull division, everyone took the northern route. It made sense - less miles, plenty of wind. But the entrance to the Chesapeake is some 450 miles south of Newport. Weather advisor for the EDS Atlantic Challenge, Ken Campbell of Commander's Weather, notes that the southern route can pay dividends. During the pre-race delivery leg of the last Around Alone event in 1997, an informal race from England to Charleston South Carolina, all the boats except for one took the southern route. The boat that went north finished well behind the rest. Now, Charleston is about the same distance south of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge - the official finish line for this year's EDS Atlantic Challenge - as Newport is to the north, so it should be an even gamble on whether to sail north around the Mid Atlantic High, or cruise south. Atlantic
surface pressure Image © Commanders Weather This surface pressure map shows the entire North Atlantic and gives a good indication of what skippers in the EDS Atlantic Challenge faced on the leg from Portsmouth to Baltimore. The northern storm track is further south than in an average summer - and the trade winds below the Mid Atlantic High are further south too. West of Ireland there is a low pressure cell with its associated frontal band stretching south-east. Off the US Atlantic coast, storms are brewing east of Cape Hatteras and deepening as they track north and east. Meanwhile, high pressure - the mid Atlantic high, or the Azores High - stretches from the Spanish coast to Bermuda. To take advantage of trade winds to its south, a yacht would have to travel almost to the Canary Islands before turning east and that extra distance is a killer in racing terms - just ask the girls aboard AlphaGraphics. Active storm track But 2001 is not 1997. This year the storm track was more vigorous, which helped to push the Mid Atlantic High further south. The result? Those heavenly trade winds on the southern route carried a heavy penalty: more miles before Baltimore looms over the horizon. The crew of Swedish entrant AlphaGraphics found themselves well behind within days of the start, as they were forced to sail downwind along the Iberian Coast before turning the corner and heading for America. On many days at the height of their trade-wind experience, AlphaGraphics recorded boat speed above or equal to the leading yachts - Kingfisher and Sill - but it was never enough to make up for the longer distance required. To compound their distance problem, AlphaGraphics turned north too early - well before Bermuda - and became bogged in light airs where the Mid Atlantic High, or Azores High, ridged to the east. Ken Campbell notes that the preferred route would have left Bermuda to starboard, thereby avoiding the worst of the light airs. After all, the Bermuda High is often an extension of the Azores High. AlphaGraphics did arrive in the Chesapeake before the start of the next leg, to Boston - but with less than 24 hours to spare. Not a lot of time to re-fit, and certainly no time to rest! Negotiating gales way up north Up north, the real race for synoptic supremacy was being challenged in earnest, beginning soon after the start when the rest of the Open 60 fleet negotiated a deep low north and west of Ireland. Roland Jourdain and Gael LeCleach's Sill Plein Fruit bore away to the north, on starboard reach, in a bid to climb up and over the low - thereby sailing off the wind right 'round the low and avoiding the worst headwinds immediately to its south. Kingfisher followed, but still copped a beating: "The winds last night reached 45 knots, Kingfisher is falling off the waves and the motion is pretty horrible. Eating and drinking has become hard, it's cold and wet with waves crashing over the boat almost constantly," MacArthur wrote in an email to her shore crew. Josh Hall's Gartmore tried to pull off the same trick as Sill. But as Ken Campbell noted, Sill made it and Gartmore failed. Why? It's a performance thing. Sill and Kingfisher are both optimised to saile better upwind than the other Open 60s - a fact that helps to explain why Ellen MacArthur and Roland Jourdain placed one and two in the Europe1 New Man Solo Trans-Atlantic race in 2000. What was the result in the EDS Atlantic Challenge, 2001? Sill set herself up as race leader and Gartmore lost valuable miles battling to get north of the high. In the end, Josh Hall and crew tacked back to the south-west as headwinds became too intense. Mike Golding's Ecover, built from the same mould as Josh Hall's Gartmore, never attempted to get north of the low, something Campbell regards as clever sailing. Golding, however, cursed the upwind bash, blaming the race committee for not demanding the Azores become a way point for this leg, thereby ensuring skippers avoid the upwind northern route. During one email to race headquarters he lamented his latitude and wished he had joined the girls aboard AlphaGraphics chasing the trades. In response, the race committee held high its commitment to 'extreme performance'. Heck, they don't call it a 'challenge' for nothing! North-East
Atlantic surface winds Image © NASA This low pressure cell, west-north-west of Ireland, was the first of many challenges for skippers and navigators in the first crewed race for Open 60s - the EDS Atlantic Challenge. Roland Jourdain's yacht Sill, co-skippered by Gael LeCleach was the only competitor to successfully sail north of the low, taking advantage of following winds. The remainder of the fleet copped an upwind bashing, with Mike Golding's Ecover taking a king hit. East Atlantic
Surface Pressure Image © Ocean Weather. This surface pressure map shows clearly the elongated low pressure zone west and north-west of Ireland. For those Open 60s able to handle a bit of windward progress - namely Sill and Kingfisher - this system posed an opportunity to get a leg-up on the competition. For those south of the low, however, the upwind pounding proved difficult to stomach. Mid Atlantic pressure According to Ken Campbell, the mid Atlantic, east of Newfoundland is all about playing wind shifts and staying in the pressure - the right gradient wind between high pressure to the south and low pressure to the north. Subtle gains can be made here, as radar-derived QuickScat images show, and on one occasion, Sill lost miles by sailing too far north, and Kingfisher gained thanks to lighter headwinds in the south - less of an upwind hassle for the big flat-bottomed boats. Fleet track mid-way through leg 3 Image © Challenge Foundation AlphaGraphics, in light blue, dives deep to the south in pursuit of trade winds while Kingfisher, Sill and Ecover battle it out in upwind conditions to the north. Meanwhile Fila, coloured pink, pulls out of the race with gear damage and ducks below the storm track on her way to Boston, where she will re-join the fleet for the last leg back to Europe. Approaching North America "West of 45 degrees there are a lot of subtle games to be played, " says Ken Campbell, of Commanders Weather. "There is the mid Atlantic High and the Gulf Stream to the south - but sailing there is hard. The wind is always on the nose - cold fronts are rare in that region. The other option is to sail north, closer to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, where colder waters, ice and fog pose a constant threat to weary skippers. Campbell notes that spring 2001 produced a late ice-out season along the Newfoundland coast. With the water temperature below normal, there was a lot of fog. Reaching at 18-20 knots in pea-soup has its risks, as anyone would understand! The next problem - and one which is perhaps more critical for racers - is the fact that prevailing south-west winds will drive yachts ashore on the coasts of Newfoundland, or Nova Scotia unless a favourable wind shift to the north-west allows them to tack without losing distance. Of course, even the most die-hard Open 60 skipper would tack onto starboard to save certain destruction of driving ashore - but the penalty paid for tacking while the wind remains from the south west is almost as painful, because it puts the boat on a heading for eastern Brazil, not Baltimore and boats behind will relish in the chance to gain miles. Mike Golding aboard Ecover had to take an ugly tack before Newfoundland, while Gael LeCleach aboard Sill and Ellen MacArthur, and her co-skipper Nick Maloney, aboard Kingfisher had to do it around the Cabot Strait - between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Sill paid a heavy price for her tack, notes Campbell, and lost her lead to Kingfisher in the process. But a broken forestay earlier no doubt contributed to her poor pointing performance. Surface
pressure Image © Ocean Weather. This surface pressure map shows winds squeezed between high pressure east of Bermuda and low pressure over the Gulf of St Lawrence. The result? Winds from the south west all along the coasts of New England and the Canadian Maritimes. They call this region 'Down East'. For sailing craft travelling along the coast from the south, it is all downwind. For racing yachts coming across the Atlantic from Europe, it is all upwind. Perhaps these sailors should call it 'up west'! Image © NASA The wind arrows show more precisely how the wind flow works along the US eastern seaboard in mid summer. Bermuda in the lower right is under the influence of high pressure, while gradient winds from the south-west ridge along the New England coast. Gulf Stream
illuminated by differences in Image © NASA The Gulf Stream is a dominant feature east of the US seaboard, and it plays a crucial role in the east-west Atlantic crossing for those taking the southern route. The accepted way is to cross it at right angles, and spend as little time in its influence as possible. When wind opposes current, short, steep, boat bashing chop is the result. For yachts sailing the northern route, the Gulf Stream is not an issue. Final approach Leading yachts in the inaugural EDS Atlantic Challenge were thrown a bonus on their final approach down the US eastern seaboard: A significant storm to their south-east. Ken Campbell recalls that the low was unusual for mid-summer, both in strength and position. "Normally there are no lows off the Virginia coast this time of year," he said. What it meant for those skippers closest to the New England coast, was that winds rotating around the low would blow strongest from the north-west, with a blustery beam reach all the way to the finish at the Chesapeake Bay bridge. Campbell notes that the low was forecast accurately four to five days in advance, and Kingfisher, Sill and Ecover worked hard to get in position. In the end, Ellen Macarthur and Nick Maloney aboard Kingfisher caught the north-west winds behind the cold front first, accelerating away from the rest of the fleet to win the leg. It was a very fascinating race," recalls Campbell, who pointed out that had the low not materialised, and the prevailing south-west air flow remained, skippers would have battled with the New England Coast just like they did with the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The race could have been decided on another one of those ugly tacks to starboard! © Jamie Brown/weather-wise.com 2001 Leg 4: Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Boston Australian
skipper Nick Maloney (a.k.a Wild Colonial Boy) (Courtesy Kingfisher Challenges) INTERVIEW WITH AN EXHAUSTED NICK MOLONEY IN BOSTON, USA,
DURING THE NIGHT. Hot links East Atlantic The UK's met office offers terrific weather images and information, starting with this animated satellite image of the eastern Atlantic and Europe, updated every six hours.Check out winds in more detail with isobars
included, in this cloud
and pressure composite image. Surface
pressure for the eastern North Atlantic compliments of Ocean
Weather. For an animated look at how winds behave,
complete with colour-coded isobars, view this three-day
animated pressure forecast. Check out the UK's inshore
and high
seas forecasts. Quickscat satellite derived winds for the east
Atlantic:
Wind
analysis from the University of Wisconsin showing surface, upper and jet
stream - or water vapor - winds. As well, there are charts showing wind shear
and upper level divergence. For the arm-chair sailor, the low-mid level
infra-red winds tell an awful lot about the sea state where the boats are.
Colour-coded arrows report wind strengths and direction at different levels.
Remember: Friction at the surface slows the wind down a bit, so it will never be
as strong at wave height as it shows on the 900hPa chart. The University
of Nottingham offers geo-stationary satellite information showing the east
Atlantic and Europe/Africa. View the east
Atlantic in infra-red from the UK's met office. Another view of the east Atlantic thanks to Weather News International. West Atlantic: View animated weather systems in the central western Atlantic in stunning colour thanks to Intellicast. Grey cloud has very little moisture, bright red and especially dark purple indicates a real bucketing. Remember: Low pressure cells cycle anti-clockwise, and highs spin the opposite. Look for frontal cloud bands sweeping down from the north-west.Surface pressure for the western North Atlantic compliments of Ocean Weather. Map is harder to understand than Intellicast's map above, but this one shows more of the ocean. Wind analysis from the University of Wisconsin. Similar to the eastern Atlantic charts. Very detailed. This is the site the pros use in a big way. Intellicast again offers us a close-up view of the US eastern seaboard and the Grand Banks area with this great animated weather map. This animated infra-red image of the eastern seaboard of the US , thanks to Weather News International shows high-level cloud very clearly, but fails to show low-level cloud. It is good, however, for looking at large-scale systems like fronts and depressions. Newfoundland weather forecasts and Eastern Canada satellite images including animated 48 hourly mpgs from GOES-East (10.70 micron) of Eastern Canada and the GOES-East (Visible) of Eastern Canada. Current forecast for Newfoundland and Labrador. Extended forecast for Newfoundland and Labrador. More great reading: Follow the Challenge Mondial Assistance through the official web site and get a preview of weather conditions on the route. Re-live the solo trans-Atlantic race of June 2000 and the Quebec to St Malo of last August. Catch up on all the past action of the recent Vendee Globe in our race archive. Re-live the action between the world's fastest multihulls in The Race Re-live the 2000 Sydney to Hobart yacht race! Break ice in the Ross Sea! |
