Oh wow. The four boats that went north of the Cape Verde Islands have gybed south to converge with the boats that went south, and to my eye it looks like the northerly boats have made a big gain.
The tracker is showing a big tightening in the DTL numbers, but I think it goes further than that.
This is a little tricky to explain to a non-sailor. Basically, the tracker computes its “distance to leader” (DTL) number via a straight measurement to the turning mark at Fernando Island, which is mostly south of them. But the reality is that these boats are tacking downwind, gybing back and forth to maintain an optimum VMG to leeward. That means that really, assuming the lead boats are willing to cross downwind of the boats behind them, the real measurement of who’s ahead or behind should be based on who is the farthest downwind.
By that measurement, just eyeballing the angles in the tracker screenshot above, ADOR and Brunel are already ahead of Dongfeng. Even more exciting for me, SCA fanboy that I’ve become: The women have closed up the gap bigtime. It looks like they’re probably still trailing the fleet, but they’re much closer than they were before.
(I keep telling myself I need to back off on the VOR posts. Most of the people who follow me presumably aren’t sailors, and probably aren’t terribly interested in all this stuff. But then I just get more excited by each new development.
I’m trying to remember to tag it all #vor so you can block it with Tumblr savior or Xkit. If you object to all the sailing content lately, please feel free to send me an ask. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to rein myself in. But at least I’ll have a data point about the pain I’m inflicting. And in the meantime, thank you for your patience with my latest obsession.)
