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Badham on Club Med, and The Race The winning pace set by Club Med from the outset appeared flawless to viewers on land, but to those involved in the magnificent 62 day win, it was anything but smooth sailing. Team meteorologist, Roger Badham, explains the intricate headaches involved … Voyage highlights: Doldrums
routing falls to race priorities March 14, 2001 When Club Med crossed The Race finish line at Marseilles ahead of all the others, Grant Dalton, Frank Proffit and crew lowered their giant mainsail, took a plunge into the brisk Mediterranean waters and cracked a cold bottle of champagne. The Race was over. They could breath easy. Back in his own private rainforest, south of Sydney, Australia, the team's weather router Roger Badham drained his coffee mug, rubbed his eyes, and lay down on the couch. Three months of constant communication with the fastest yacht on the planet had taken its toll. It was time to rest, reflect on the excitement of The Race, and dream of smooth waters. Filling the order for a fair wind In fact, smooth waters were exactly what Dalton and crew had ordered for this latest global challenge. Badham tried to fill the order as best as possible, but sometimes Neptune had other ideas. "These big maxicats are not good in a seaway," recalls Badham. "Their ideal is 25 knots of breeze on a mill pond." True, the big cats can handle big seas - Innovation Explorer's Cape Horn rounding in 60 knot winds and wild seas proved that point. But they can't go fast. "They start to leap off waves and crash into troughs where they break things," says Badham. "These boats need constant attention to route them. And it is impossible to satisfy all the stringent requirements. They want wind from the beam to 130 degrees and no seaway. That is the ideal requirement. "My answer is you can’t always do that!" Marrying tactics The basic philosophy of routing is this: Bring the short term gain and the long-term picture together. The short term gain is all about taking advantage of weather situations presenting themselves at the moment. The long term picture is all about routing around the next obstacle: The doldrums, the South Atlantic high, a trough of low pressure in the middle of the South Pacific. Of course, prediction models are used to figure out what the weather will be like when that long term aim starts to loom over the horizon. "The long term aim extends as far as you think the models are valid," notes Badham. You would like to think they go beyond seven days but they often go haywire after four days." Downwind and loving it! The three Gilles Ollier cats were closely matched in The Race - provided nothing broke. Roger Badham points out that Grant Dalton stuck to his philosophy of not pushing the boat to the breaking point. Cam Lewis aboard Team Adventure obviously didn't agree and he paid a dear price with delamination on the fairing of his main beam. One day he was within striking distance of Club Med, the next he was headed for Cape Town. Never again would he sail closer than 3000 miles from the leader. Image courtesy of The Race. Around the world in 62 days From Barcelona through the doldrums, The Race was relatively straight forward: A couple of big legs in the Mediterranean saw the maxicats out of the Straits of Gibralter without ever facing the kind of westerly winds expected for that time of year. The three Gilles Ollier-designed cats, Club Med, Team Adventure and Innovation Explorer soon latched on to North East trades, while Playstation stagnated in port with a torn mainsail. The big American cat never recovered, and later, when its old mainsail started to fall apart at the seams, Steve Fossett and his team retired. Club Med's crossed the inter-tropical convergence zone according to race tactics, rather than routing priorities. "The longitude was not what we planned," says Badham, "But this was a boat race and you can't always do what you like! "After the Cape Verde Islands, it looked to me that crossing at 23-24 was going to be as good as 25-28 so why throw away five hours? The only thing that really stuffed us was that the ITCZ moved south with us when we were in, and Team Adventure came down in phase with that southern movement, gaining slightly. "Then Innovation Explorer came across as it buckled back to the north. But even with all that we just hung on to lead so the plan was basically sound though risky. Innovation Explorer never got back the five hours they lost heading further to the west." Tools of the trade Badham, like all routers, used a variety of digital data to help plot a path through the doldrums. He used all the hi resolution satellite images, infra red, water vapor and visible to detect the mean latitude of the ITCZ. He used real time satellite pictures to detect wind strength and direction, as well as models to help forecast trends. As well, Badham advised the team to skirt all the major cumulonimbus clouds - zone of light airs exist in their shadow - and use winds circulating around their edges, especially at night. As it turned out, Team Adventure crossed the zone in daylight and had
marginally better winds. "Now we have an even bigger headache with the size and persistence of the For weather enthusiasts, the race really began in the South Atlantic - when that big high pressure cell dominated the ocean - stretching from Uruguay to Namibia and as far south as 35 degrees. The big, stagnant system forced skippers and navigators well to the west to avoid the light winds at the centre of the high - There was no shortcut to the south this time around. Roger Badham reckons the race was over in the South Atlantic, after Club Med escaped the high first, sprinting to a lead several hundred miles ahead of Innovation Explorer. When Team Adventure retired to Cape Town with structural damage and crew injuries, Club Med was left alone. For the rest of The Race, her lead was never really threatened "The South Atlantic was a shit fight going down and coming back," rues Badham. "The whole Atlantic had a lot of messy high pressure systems. There was no long wave trough jutting out from southern Brazil into the Southern Ocean at that point. If there was, the trough would have cut the high in two, or at least made it more mobile." As it turned out, there was lot of 'soft work' getting in and around that big high. Badham recalls calling on a lot of models to figure out a game plan. "The person further south is always going to win," he notes, "but is it better to go south west or south east? There appeared to be a little opening if we stuck to our guns if we went to the south east. Team Adventure followed the lead, hot on the heels of Club Med. Innovation Explorer, meanwhile stuck to the west - often a good principle, notes Badham, but because the high was so expansive, that push to the west didn’t work. Club med sprinted to a decisive lead as she caught the westerly airstream of the Southern Ocean first Fleet positions Picture courtesy of Virtual Spectator. Club Med (blue line) sprints ahead of Team Adventure (orange line) and Innovation Explorer (green line). You can see here why Innovation Explorer's western route failed to work - the big South Atlantic high swallowed them up. Team Adventure would follow Club Med closely for another two days before leaping off a wave and ploughing into the trough. Damage to the main beam fairing and crew injuries forced a lay-over at Cape Town. For skipper Cam Lewis, navigator Jean Yves Bernot and the rest of Team Adventure, the race to win was over. A kinder, gentler Southern Ocean While the South Atlantic left Badham pounding his desk in frustration, the sprint through the Southern Ocean proved relatively straight forward. Badham says it was 'kinder than usual'. But then, that is what ocean racing is all about: Gains and losses all the time. Despite the smooth sailing, Badham says he and Club Med failed to position well from Kerguelen east to Australia. "We were at the top of a low pressure system, riding in the wake of its front," he recalled. "We should have been out in front of the low, on its eastern equatorial side." That key ingredient - the eastern equatorial side - means a boat will sail into a sea unaffected by recent wind changes. With fair winds from behind - usually north-west winds in the southern hemisphere - big maxicats like Club Med can record excellent progress. In this case, riding in the wake of the front, pushing into a sea left confused by rapid wind changes from north-east to north-west to south-west, it was impossible to push the boat to its maximum. And there were other considerations. Worrying about wind angles In this case, wind angles also posed a problem. With a constant westerly air stream from behind, Club Med was forced to bring the wind closer to her beam - between 130 and 90 degrees is best for these machines. However, in the southern Indian Ocean Club Med was either heading well out of system - to its north - or directly into it. "If you're too far north you travel more miles and you don’t have the best pressure," notes Badham. "If you gybe and head south, into the system, you dial up too much breeze. And these things don’t like that. You can’t go too fast or you leap off waves and physically damage the boat." Jet stream kink To complicate matters a kink in the jet stream under Australia, well to the east, slowed the weather systems down to the point that Club Med would stay locked in position - with three reefs in the main and flying a small gennaker. "We were still traveling along in the low 20 knot range, doing 450 miles a day, but we physically couldn't go faster in those conditions," said Badham. "The sea state wasn't boat breaking, but neither was it conducive to going real fast. We were on starboard gybe and to go onto port, meant going virtually north. "I imagined the low would move away faster to east than we would travel, leaving us to ride the next frontal system in a more comfortable sea state. As it turned out we rode it for three days. We were locked in with a breeze of 30-40 knots and uncomfortable seas." Despite the less than ideal situation, Club Med still broke the record for crossing the Indian Ocean, recording seven days and 18 hours. Innovation Explorer followed, bettering the time by four hours. Southern Indian Ocean surface
pressure Image courtesy of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Both Club Med and Innovation Explorer are riding westerlies between the two fronts, south-west of Australia on this day. While steady westerly winds are pushing Club Med along at 20 plus knots, the sea state is confused and faster progress is impossible. Southern Indian Ocean Jet Stream Image courtesy of the Australian
Bureau of Meteorology Another look at the westerly flow in the southern Indian Ocean: Note the big kink in the jet south of Australia. That is a blocking situation and has slowed down the two frontal systems cradling Club Med and innovation Explorer. Normally these low pressure cells and their associated frontal systems would travel faster than the world's greatest multihulls. But thanks to the blockage to the east, the boats remained in the grasp of this weather system for three days. The passage through Cook Strait - a necessary way point in The Race - delighted kiwi fans, as the big blue boat with their skipper and their navigator passed in front of the pack. But it frustrated everybody involved within the team effort. "For us the whole thing of going to Cook Strait was totally out of phase with the weather," recalled Badham. They avoided the windless centre of high pressure in the southern Tasman Sea by hugging the New Zealand coast from Milford Sound to Cape Farewell, but all the way through the strait Club Med faced headwinds. The big blue boat passed Wellington at dusk, and then they were left wallowing.. The culprit was a little cell of high pressure off the Canterbury coast, and that moved north as a new front and new low came across from the Tasman. As it turned out, Innovation Explorer was riding that same low and set a new 24 hour distance record of 629.19 miles, beating Club Med's record of 625.7 set last June "We had to wait until the arriving low pushed across us and to the north," recalls Badham. "We wanted to get east and south, but south was more important. However, we couldn’t go south at first because that's where the bubble of high pressure lay." All night long the crew of Club Med counted the flashes from Cape Palliser Light, at the south-east corner of the north island. Certainly that was more exciting than watching the log: From midnight to dawn they averaged just two knots - all the while Innovation Explorer breathing down their necks - and didn't get above 10 knots until noon the next day. Downunder in 32 days Image © Thierry Martinez. Club Med close reaches through Cook Strait on February 2 after a record Indian Ocean crossing. Despite the seemingly fair winds things were not rosy for Grant Dalton, Franck Proffit, Mike Quilter and crew. Roger Badham recalled the frustration of dealing with headwinds all the way through the strait only to end up parked for nine hours within sight of Wellington, as the centre of a high pressure cell sat on top of them. "We were out of phase with the weather in Cook Strait," he said. We got it wrong. Days later the team, with Badham guiding them, sailed hard and positioned the boat for a record 24 hour run of 655 .2 miles.After the slow start out of Cook Strait, Badham recalls that it took the team half of the southen Pacific to get back into the groove, and in position for a record run. "We worked hard to get into the very right position. That’s what we tried to do and that’s what we did," he said. The main aim was to get east of a low pressure cell, on the equatorial side of the frontal cloud system. This optimum position meant Club Med would be surfing the weather system into a region of 'young' ocean, with few seas disturbed by recent wind changes. This position would be the opposite of what the big blue maxicat was trapped within while crossing the southern Indian Ocean. Badham, however, remained critical of even this premium spot with regard to meteorology. "I thought we would be limited by getting out in front of that low - while there was flatter water and potential for good pace, we were limited 100 per cent by the speed of the weather system. There was a tiny ridge of high pressure ahead where the breeze would go soft, and we couldn't sail through that ridge to the other side. "If the low is moving at a nice speed you move at a nice speed, but if the low slows you slow!" Several times on Club Med's record 655.2 mile day, the crew anxiously checked and rechecked the barometer. When the needle on the instrument rose, winds veered to the right signaling that the maxicat was surfing ahead of the system and into the ridge of high pressure. Other times winds backed to the left as the weather system slowly started to overtake the cat. The record run surprised even Badham, who was concerned about the number of icebergs sighted in that latitude - about 58-59 degrees south. However, the run was successful, and it remains to be seen how long that incredible 24 hour distance will remain on the record books. Club Med rounded the horn in a stiff westerly breeze, and maintained a bristling pace past the Falklands and out into the South Atlantic. Behind them, Innovation Explorer rounded the horn in fine style: 60 knots of breeze up the clacker and plenty of spare sails lashed to the aft portion of the trampoline - anything to get those narrow bows up in the air. However, the winning circus trick in this corner of the globe goes to Club Med in their attempt to slingshot around high pressure east of Uruguay, surf around an emerging low pressure cell to the north and try to collect the south-east trades ... all in one go! It was an ambitious plan - and one which could not have been considered just a few years ago. Pay attention here, because this is the kind of routing trick we will see more of in future maxicat races! Badham apparently said 'go fast' with the aim of covering 1000 miles in 40 hours in order to beat the eastward migration of that high and round its starboard flank without getting caught in its windless centre. Dalton and Proffitt said 'sure' and 24 hours later recorded a whopping 591 miles. The big ask, it seems, was just too easy ... nearly. The team sailed around the high and then ran into trouble under a long wave trough, stretching from southern Brazil south-east into the Southern Ocean.. Little lows are often found under that trough line. This time there were three little lows - one to the east, one north near Brazil and one in the middle. As Club Med approached, this 'middle' storm developed in intensity to become the dominant system within the trough line. "Routing software showed we would make it around the system," recalled Badham. "It suggested that we virtually aim for the developing low. "We were in easterly winds at the time. As we got closer to the low, and if we aimed for the bottom right hand corner - the south east quadrant - the wind was expected to veer (clockwise) from east to south east and then we could cross the trough line and go back to the left, to the south-west, around to the north west to the north and finally slingshot around the system to the east in northerly breeze." Wow! What a challenge! Well, Badham was using all the models and they all agreed on one thing: To place the location of the emerging low incorrectly by a few degrees of latitude and longitude. As well, none of the models suggested that it might deepen the way it did. "At one stage we got into northerly winds, then two hours later the low broadened and swallowed us up. "The breeze came from every which way and the seas were like a washing machine. "We remained trapped while the low moved to the south east. In the end, we didn't sail out of it. We were spat out of it! We were in that system for 12 hours and in that time the boat nearly broke. There were three to five metre swells and winds were 0-30 knots from all angles. There was a huge amount of rain, thunderstorms, short gnarly seas. Padeyes popped out of the deck and there was some delamination. It wasn't a dramatic low by any means, but as Badham points out - these maxicats don't like chaos on the water - at least, not like a Volvo 60! Sure, it was a risk. And Badham's models weren't very helpful, but what a complicated piece of meteorology! And it very nearly worked! Better luck next time we say. After all, this is the future of ocean racing! Badham was less forgiving of the incident: "I though we would get around that system before it swallowed us up," he lamented.
"In hindsight I would have been more conservative and sailed to get
ahead of the low before veering east and getting around it. In hindsight we
could have run more to the north and not to the east so soon. We had to get
our easting, but we could have used the low to go around to the north and come
into weaker, softer winds."
Badham notes that this corner of the South Atlantic is notoriously tricky. Like any place off an east coast - like the Tasman Sea, like the east coast of the US, a lot of 'east coast lows' develop. There is warm water to contend with, frontal systems reaching up from the Southern Ocean and a well-developed subtropical jet stream. "Your get intensifications of low pressure systems," he says. "And quite dramatically at times!" With the onset of south-east trades, the crew were able to relax - as much as you can relax on a racing maxicat! But first there was one critical maneuver: To sail into the ridge of high pressure to the north-east of that long wave trough line and judge when north-west winds circulating around the top of the high pressure cell will veer to the north-east - signalling the start of south-east trades. Badham says this critical 'tack point' involves sailing into a softening breeze and judging how far into the ridge a boat should go, and exactly when to tack. "Club Med did it very neatly," he recalls. Fleet positions Club Med (blue line) leaves behind an area of low pressure within a trough line separating two bubbles of high pressure in the South Atlantic. Innovation Explorer is sailing around the starboard flank of the Uruguay high. Fleet positions Club Med tacks to the north after pushing into the the edge of a high pressure ridge. Club Med's weather router Roger Badham says this critical 'tack point' involves sailing into a softening breeze and judging how far into the ridge a boat should go, and exactly when to tack. "Club Med did it very neatly," he recalls. The big blue maxicat went across at 30 degrees west, although Badham wanted 29 degrees. "We tried to slot into the least cumulo-nimbus activity and where the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone buckled furthest to the south, making the crossing as narrow as possible," he said. "The breeze stopped on the equator. The buckle in the ITCZ was between 0-1 degree north. We went from a south-east trade to a washy easterly very quickly. We wafted our way through. It wasn’t a bad passage." The big Atlantic low which lifted Club Med out of the north-east trades and right through the Straights of Gibralter, was well forecast by all the models. What made the low unusual was that it replaced strong high pressure in the East Atlantic, and its timing - it all seemed orchestrated to help the leading cats in The Race. "We knew what was going to occur up front," recalls Badham. "It was a big low, with many centres each dumb-belling around the other. We just had to make sure we could hook on to it. "To do that we had to cross a ridge of high pressure about 19 degrees north and push through that." As the breeze veered from north east to south east, signaling Club Med was skirting the very edge of this system, Badham had to decide whether to head north or east. As it turned out north was better than north-east. "A couple times the ridge, located west of the Canaries, pushed into our way. And the models weren't perfect: Typically they might have predicted 10-12 knots, then when we got there it was eight knots," he said. "We were constantly working up into better wind speed by getting into the circulation of the low, but we also wanted flat seas. We wanted to be on the rim of the low rather than sail too much into it." In addition, Club Med wanted to be where the ridge of high pressure was being displaced by emerging low pressure. "The best position was the equatorial, leading side of the low and that is exactly what we had coming into Gibralter," says Badham. "In that case we were in the new part of the low, sailing over reasonably flat seas and at a good wind angle - a beam reach." Club Med ran through Gibralter and as soon as the big blue maxicat got through and into the other side - bang - there was absolutely nothing. A warm front traveling across Spain was responsible for the slow-down. Badham recalls how the warm front - 'a void, a big mass of cloud', pulled an upper level trough across the straits from north Africa, and underneath there was just nothing. "It was lying like a log on the roadway right in front of us," he says. "And there was just nothing. We sat there for 12 hours. Right on four degrees west. We sat there doing less than five knots of boatspeed." Of course, the lull didn't last all that long, and with a new westerly flow following behind the front, Club Med roared to victory crossing the line doing more than 20 knots. What a way to enter the history books! Within a fortnight of completing The Race, Roger Badham flew to Auckland to work with Team New Zealand in preparation for the America'Cup 2003. For the Volvo 'round the world race starting in September, Badham will be training Dalton, Quilter and crew as part of their 2001-2002 campaign. © Jamie Brown/weather-wise.com 2001
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