There were some interesting maneuvers at the front of the VOR…
There were some interesting maneuvers at the front of the VOR fleet this morning. After running the tracker back and forth and thinking about it a bit, here’s my current best guess about what happened:
0715 – The regular every-six-hours “sched” comes in. Everyone knows where everyone is.
0845 – Brunel, in second place, gybes to starboard to take them farther west. My guess is that this gybe was about setting them up to sail in the stronger winds of the small low-pressure region to the south of them that I was speculating about last night.
0855 – ADOR, in first place, gybes to starboard as well. I assume this is about heading for that same patch of higher wind. Also, I suspect they may have been able to see Brunel gybe behind them, and wanted to cover. The boats were separated by about 14 nautical miles, close enough for them to see Brunel’s gybe, assuming visibility was good. So ADOR may have been trying to stay between Brunel and the better wind.
0945 – Vestas gybes to starboard. They may have seen the approaching Brunel, and wanted to preserve their westward position.
1020 – A series of weird flips in boat orientation are visible starting now in the tracker for ADOR and Brunel. No idea what that is. Both boats had wind. My guess is that it’s a tracker anomaly, maybe related to that lat/lng bug I previously talked about.
1106 – Vestas gybes to port, resuming their mostly southward heading. Maybe they decided they were as far west as they wanted to be?
1130 – Vestas gybes back to starboard. I guess they weren’t quite as far west as they wanted. More or less simultaneously, ADOR gybes back to port.
1200 – Vestas gybes back to port.
1205 – Brunel gybes back to port.
As I’ve reconstructed things, these maneuvers were partly about strategy (positioning to get into the best part of the upcoming low-pressure system) but mostly about tactics (jockeying with the nearby boats to defend or attack). Another factor might have been wind shifts; the boats may have been gybing to stay on the headed (favored) gybe as they tacked downwind.
I’m looking forward to watching today’s batch of videos (none of which I’ve seen yet) to see if they shed more light on this.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1wD6YwU.
Tags: vor, volvo ocean race.
