Leader Board - Motoring 18:14.07N 25:20.80W

Shaya Moya
Don & Susan Smyth
Sat 27 Nov 2010 06:38
Leader Board and Motoring
Dear Blog readers. Apologies for the absence of a blog yesterday, we have had a frustrating 24 hours chasing very little wind which is backing/veering dramatically and mocking our attempts to sail to any planned course. We changed the sail configuration several times before nightfall eventually settling for a goose wing configuration (poled out genoa on starboard side and boom on port side with a gybe preventer attached). Although this is a stable and safe configuration it only allows you to run before the wind, so the helmsman needs to adjust course as the wind changes. We were aware the wind would veer during the night and we decided that if our course became greater than 255 degrees we would need to gybe to avoid going too far west too soon.
In "normal" conditions the ideal route is to sail south to just below 18 degrees of latitude just North of the Verde's. This would take you into the top of the band of trade winds which flow from East to West and carry you across the Atlantic. Unfortunately due to confused weather in the North Atlantic, particularly a deep low West of the Azores, the trade belt is being held much further South. We are most likely to encounter South Westerlies where the trades would normally be.The lack of narrative at the end of our weather routers report yesterday, suggests that the actual wind patterns over the next 24 hours are quite uncertain.
What does this have to do with the leader board I hear you ask! The leader board is calculated using the yachts distance to the finish in St Lucia, their average speed towards that waypoint (vector made good VMG) and then adjusted by the handicap of the yacht. i.e. if a yacht is 2000 nautical miles from St Lucia and has made an average VMG of 10 knots. The Arc guys would assume it will take this yacht 200 hours to reach the finish. If this yacht has a handicap of 1.1 then the leader board ranking will place them with an expected time of 220 hours. This can obviously only assume the yacht is going to sail directly towards the finish (rhumb line). Therefore, yachts that have taken a tactical course much further East and South will show very poorly on the leader board but could reach the trades sooner and finish significantly better.
Then! just in case you are not already totally confused we have the motoring factor. Over the last 72 hours we have motor sailed for 40 odd hours. We will incur a penalty for this which will not be declared until the finish of the race. The penalty will be between  x 1.0 and 2.0 of all motored hours depending on the total number of motored hours collectively for the fleet. I suspect that at least 80% of the fleet will have motored a similar number of hours, you can't do much with a 40 tonne yacht in 4 knots of wind. However, we also know Sulana, another Oyster 56 has not switched on their engine at all as they have an ambition to "Sail" across the Atlantic. They are currently well over 100 miles behind us on a similar course, on adjusted times at the end, they could still beat us by a good margin. So the moral of this rather boring blog is - It aint over till the fat lady sings!  
PS there should be a more interesting blog with pics later in the day. I make no apologies for errors or omissions in this blog having just finished my watch at 04.00 I've handed the helm to poor .Tony who is trying to sail a course whilst the wind vane does pirouettes around the top of the mast.
Catch you some time in February at this rate.
First Mate Dave