We Hit the wall

Position: 39,14.15S , 59,24.9E

Speed: 7 knots, Course: 32 deg.

We hit the wall. We have hit light air and are watching the others sail up to us. We are still being tormented by the old cold front that we fell off the back of about 48 hours ago. This is the same front that ABN AMRO ONE managed to stay on due to their 30 mile lead on us at the time. That 30 miles lead has since turned into 300 miles as they rode the front.

We had southerly winds during the day today and had nice distance runs only changing sails twice and keeping the boat moving fast. We stretched our lead on movistar and ABN AMRO TWO. Now, as the tree of us approach the remnants of the disintegrating cold front, we have slowed first. The routing software has been telling us for two days that we are going to be able to penetrate the front and get the northwesterlies on the other side.

However, none of these predictions has panned out so far.

We just have to keep trying to sail north-northeast and work our way to the north-westerlies. My guess is that this won’t happen and we will just sit here until some new wind fills.

This would not be so bad except that the new wind that is coming from behind. So this will pick up Movistar and bring them up to us and ABN AMRO TWO.

This will make it a three boat scramble for the points at the scoring gate when 12 hours ago we were feeling pretty comfortably in second place. As frustrating as it is, I suppose it could be worse.

There is a very confused sea out here from the southerly that we sailed in for the past 30 hours and the strong northwest winds that have been here for the past few days. This makes for tough sailing in only 5 knots of wind and of course it is now dark too.

Other than that life is pretty good out here. It has rained again most of the day as we are stuck in this front. The water temperature is quite warm a 18.6 so the air temperature is very mild. These ice waypoints that we have to honor are keeping us safe but it has changed this leg pretty significantly. This leg 2 used to be one of the defining legs of the Round the World race. We have been out here a week and haven’t gotten our gloves on yet.

I washed my hair today in a rain squall. That felt pretty nice. I used too much dish soap though so I will be dripping bubbles for a while. Beef stew is on the menu tonight. That is basically filet mingnon with hollandaise sauce. Then to wash it down, we will have a little desalinated Cabernet.

We just spotted a light in the mist ahead. It is either ABN AMRO TWO that has now passed us or a fishing boat or a real Pirate ship. Not sure yet. We will let you know.

END

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

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Interesting Day Today

Position: 41,8.50S , 52,35.54E

Speed: 17 knots, Course: 82 deg.

Very interesting day today that produced a lot of work for skippers and navigators. Basically the weather systems that we had been sailing in and planning on sailing for a few more days changed and we had to scramble to understand a new picture. The only ones exempt from this are ABN 1 who had just enough of a jump.30 miles on us.to escape the front that swallowed the rest of us up.

Early this morning we slowly fell off the train ride. The wind started to drop in velocity and lift. Everyone knows the symptoms and knows what the ramifications are. Anyway as frustrating as it is to see one boat have the good fortune of a breakaway, it happens in ocean racing. This could be a race winner for ABN1 as they will no doubt add 200 miles to their lead in the next 24 hours. We had the good fortune of this in the1998 race when we rounded Cape Horn with a 100 mile lead and turned it into 500 miles in three days as we skated off in good breeze while the rest of the fleet parked at the Falklands. However, there could be some tricky conditions awaiting on the Australian coast so it is never over ’til its over. But for now the guys on ABN 1 are feeling fat and happy.

We are having a good race with the “kids” on ABN2. We have been about 7 miles apart for the past 12 hours but never seen them. We have been in the front all day and it has been raining hard and extremely dense fog. Not very windy though; 10-18 knots from the south.

We past the first gate in the race this afternoon. The race organizers have placed to “gates” in the course to prevent us from going too far south where the icebergs are. It is a good thing not to run through all the ice like we did in 2002 but staying this far north really changing the game. In some ways it is more challenging because if we were not up here we would be screaming along in the south-westerly’s just making hay toward Melbourne and having a blast. Instead, we are up here trying to figure out if we are going to get hit by a secondary low getting spun out of this old decaying front. I was thinking that it may not be too far from here to go to the Seychelles which is a place I have always wanted to go.

Jules and I spent 8 hours straight working through about 20 different possible scenarios today and running them through our software. We were trying to generate a model which resembled what we have in reality as theforecasts we got were not accurate. This is normal as the forecasts are based on models and models are not always accurate. The ones for the Atlantic are much more accurate because they are anchored with wind reports from ships but down here there are any reports to help tune the models. We finally got one were comfortable with then the next weather report came in and confirmed what we had figured out.

We are not out of the woods yet though as there is a secondary low spinning off the front and that could cause havoc for us if we get hit with its 40 knots north or northeasterly winds. Pirates, ABN2 are trying desperately to catch back up to the front and cross to the south and east of the new low. The models think we can do it but only time will tell. At the last position report, Movistar had west wind so it looks like they are in the transition and possibly heading for the north side of the secondary low. We are further to the south east so we actually hope we get to see how they do on the next position report before we have to take the dive into the transition.

Other than that, things are normal onboard. Today was Anthony Merrington’s birthday so he got an extra birthday protein bar. We went through a few sail changes in the morning but have been riding the same sail now for 8 hours. That is a nice stretch for the all of us to get a lot of other jobs done onboard, sewing torn sail bags, repairing the sink, fixing leaks, etc. Sleep has been pretty good in the last 2 hours as we are not pounding much at all.

Speaking of sleep, I think I might just slip off and get some. When the transition comes, it will be a busy 4-5 hours for me.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

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We have been Battling All Day

Position: 42,30.94S , 46,56.79E

Speed: 14 knots, Course: 59 deg.

We have been battling with ABN 2 all day. They caught up to us and nearly passed us in 20 knots reaching conditions. They recorded the best runs of the four lead boats on the last two position reports. Their extra form stability was perfect for these conditions. The wind has now lightened considerably and lifted and we are making some small gains back on them. We have been within sight of them all day except that a thick fog came in for about 6 hours but we tracked them on our radar.

ABN 1 also made some good gains on the fleet earlier today but then slowed and lost some ground to both us and ABN2 as they got to some lighter winds first.

We spent a lot of time worrying if we had the right sail on today when ABN 2 caught us. We haven’t had enough time yet to be sure of our sail cross-overs. Also we are learning where there is too much overlap in some sails and where we have holes in our inventory. ABN 2 had a very nice specialty sail on today that we got to have a look at. For a long time they were flying it stealth in the fog, but then a clearing came and we got a good look at it.

As this class is new and some of the boats in this race are of fairly different design, not all sails work on all boats and not all boats need the same sails that other boats need. So it is a complex problem to understand what is fast, if it is fast on your boat, or is it not the sail but some other attribute that makes a certain boat fast in certain conditions. There is no substitute for time in the boat in order to figure all this out. That was out biggest loss from leg 1. Time in the boat. Not the points.

We are expecting a front tonight and in fact we are in the warm sector now with a lot of rain falling on us. If the front runs over us we will get lifted and have to gybe to starboard. Our router software doesn’t think we will get run over by the front but looking at the actual situation on deck, it looks like we will. It would have been nice to have hooked onto the front and ride it out of here but on the other hand that plays into ABN’s hands as it would have been more power reaching. Now we are struggling in light stuff which is better for the Farr boats.

Onboard, life is good. I really enjoy these long legs. You get time to get into routines and you really get the sense that you are traveling somewhere as well as racing, of course. Being in sight of another boat for the whole day was great as we are all used to racing side by side other boats in the Olympics or America’s Cup. Seeing your competitor pushes you harder. We are getting our routines down and even having some time for a few jokes. We are eating food like there won’t be any tomorrow. It is getting colder so we are all getting thicker mid layers on. Someone even had their gloves on last night. Balaclavas or rubberized skull caps are popular items as well.

I just made the boys on deck a round of hot chocolate with 1.5 rations each so they are happy. I got one for myself while I am writing to you.

I see a big rain squall coming on the radar so I better go. We may need to scramble a bit for this one.

Paul Cayard

Pirate of the Caribbean

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We Continue to March Along

Position: 42,56.9S , 38,23.49E

Speed: 18 knots, Course: 82 deg.

We continue to march along to the east is 18-20 knots of wind from 020. All is well onboard the Pearl although we did have a small electrical fire. Juggy and Jules sorted out. It was a “two alarmer”. That means it was only severe enough to get two people out of their bunks from their coveted sleep time. That is two out of four.

We have spent the past 24 hours in an ABN sandwich. We have ABN 1 to leeward and ahead and ABN 2 to windward and behind. Judging how these two did on leg one this is probably not a bad place to be. We are reaching with about 90 degree true wind angle and the beam of the two ABN boats is doing them good here. ABN 1 has made steady gains on us over the past 24 hours while we are just holding off ABN2. Movistar has made some gains hopeful from the fact that they are behind us and the front and stronger winds are hitting them first.

The wind has gone from 330 to 030 during the course of the day so We have gone from spinnaker in the morning to an A0 (reaching Code 0) to the blast reacher and finally to the J4 now. We always have the genoa staysail up under all those sails. So it has been a busy day with all the changes. Still we got some good maintenance done around the boat, calking some leaks, working on some navigational tools for Jules and I, and just generally getting things tidied up.

Yesterday we had two close encounters with whales. Both passed up one boat length off to our port side, both were heading west. We were just lucky not to hit them. We were traveling in excess of 20 knots at the time so I hate to think of what would have happened to each party if we had crashed.

Albatross are starting to come along and check us out. They are amazing birds, so efficient in shape, hardly flapping their wings and gliding for hours. We have seen some pretty big ones..10 foot wingspan.

The sea temp is down to 11 degrees so now that we are reaching at 90 true, which give us about 45 apparent wind angle, the spray is flying straight into our faces and it is cold. Time to add another layer under our Musto foulies. Almost time to break out some gloves. Also noticeable is that we are constantly hungry. We eat a meal and then 30 minutes later start rummaging around for snacks. Luckily we brought plenty of food.

The forecast for the next three days is north westerly winds about 20-25 knots with 30 some times. So it looks like will make good mileage for the next few days, not record breaking stuff but still close to 500 miles per day.

Time to get into the bunk.

Paul Cayard

Skipper of The Black Pearl

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We Found the Wind, Finally

43 south 25 East / Boat speed: 25 knots, Course 100True

We found the wind, finally. It has been a slow start to Leg 2 but now we are on the “highway” heading east and chewing up miles.

We throttled back on the second night when things got rough and Ericsson and Brasil 1 broke. We know how gutted they feel.

We are now in second place with ABN 1 in sight just down to leeward of us. We are blasting along with the masthead spinnaker up doing 25 knots in 30 knots of wind. The boat is already difficult to sail and very highly loaded as we dig the bow in to a wave every minutes or so and 50 cm of water comes down the deck and the boat does a huge deceleration. Whoever designed these bow sprits did a good job…so far. I don’t know how that thing is still on there. I think we will have to downshift again tonight if the wind stays up around 30. I am thinking that winning this leg could be all about not breaking down.

Yesterday and last night was a struggle getting through the high pressure ridge. A lot of slating, tacking onto to starboard and thinking we were finally out of it only to die in another hole and get swallowed up by the high again fro another two hours. Finally around midnight we got onto starboard and the wind held and gradually built from 2 knots adding about one know per hour through this morning. We got through it though, believing and investing in the south and west and the direction from which the wind would come…and it did. We raced within sight of the two ABN boats much of the time and are right with them now. Movistar chose to stay far to the east and while they were winning on distance to the mark for the past several position reports, they will now pay and all three of us and maybe Premier too, will cross ahead of them. A long way to go to Melbourne but getting to the highway was the first strategy game for skippers and navigators to play on this leg.

We are all settled in to our watches and systems and everything is functioning well. I know this sounds trivial but without the experience of doing leg 1, we are still getting sorted. The boat and crew arte in good shape at the moment and I really want to keep it that way.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

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A Rough 15 Hours

It has been a rough 15 hours out here. Yesterday afternoon the wind came up to 30 knots from the southeast and some rather large and steep waves built up. Port tack in particular was very rough. The Pearl was launching off the waves at 11 knots and slamming down hard making some awful sounds so we even slowed her down for a while. Maybe a bit shy from our leg 1 mishap but, no matter what, you can’t win if the boat breaks.

This morning we are back to full speed in the 15 knots of wind and significantly improved sea condition.

Yesterday we and Ericsson witnessed a pretty impressive display of boat speed by ABN 1. Around 11:00 local time they were one mile dead astern of us and we were the same 1 mile astern of Ericsson, all lined up on starboard tack. As the wind built from 8 to 20-25 knots, ABN simply sailed through our lee and that of Ericsson and back up in front of both of us and put another two miles on us by sunset. The ABN design is very good in conditions where stability is required. Unfortunately, I think that will be most of the time in these boats.

Life is all good onboard the Black Pearl. All are in good health and the boat is in good condition. We had one bit of damage on the first day with the radar being torn off the mast in a tack. Juggy, the man of all trades and skills, has relaminated the bracket twice and we will try to get it back on the mast in the light conditions that we are expecting tonight.

The weather has been surprisingly moderate, fairly warm air and sea temp (22C). We had a couple of flying fish land in the cockpit and flap around for a while until they eventually slithered back into the water out the back of the cockpit. There were a few rain showers which were very welcome by the crew as we were getting more salt water in our face and hair than we needed.

Regarding the tactics of the past 48 hours, most of the fleet has been arriving at the same conclusions, which is to work to the south east and then make a straight shot to the south to get the westerlies. The exception is Movistar who seems to be going far to the east. With the two options for course being 100 or 180 true, the Movistar course of 100 is rated best by the position report as the waypoint we are racing to is to the east-southeast. But this is of little importance, what does matter is who gets to the ice way points first and more importantly, who gets to the scoring waypoint at 70E longitude first. Most of us believe in the strategy of getting south to the highway of westerly winds and making big miles in a hurry to the east once we get there. We are going to pay the price now be transitioning the high pressure ridge which will have light winds. It is on the other side of this ridge that the westerlies lie.

Brasil1 has done a very nice job of playing the shifts in the past 24 hours and I think they are in the best position. We have been in a pack with Ericsson and ABN and we all tacked to port yesterday afternoon at the same time. ABN just stretched on us because of their speed and we stayed close with Ericsson until we throttled back a bit. Still, in the big picture, we are relatively in the same neighborhood.

So it will be interesting to see what happens tonight as the fleet transitions the ridge. This is a place were one boat can get a bit lucky.

One knot more wind when there is just 3 knots of wind is a lot. The wind will be very patchy and volatile for about 6 hours. The first boat out of the ridge and into the westerlies should stretch nicely on the fleet.

I am going to try to get some of the other guys to write some daily reports so you can get to know their personalities.

That is all for now.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

Just got the position report. Looks like Ericsson either had to throttle back as well or had some other problem. ABN just keeps pouring it on and is now 11 miles straight in front of us. Movistar tacked and is quite a ways to the north. Jules and I think the race is to the south and finding the best way through the ridge. So we will be scouring the sat pictures and Quick scat. I will explain quick scat at another time. I need a nap.

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That was a Crazy Start

That was a crazy start. I haven’t been on a boat without steerage for years. And it happened not just once but a few times in the first 2 hours of the race. Boat were backing down, gybing upwind, it was chaotic.

The start itself wasn’t bad. We had about 5 knots of wind and the fleet got off the line all pretty even. Movistar had a nice jump at the committee boat end. That was just the beginning of the show though. After that, the wind basically died and came from a variety of directions, all at less than 2 knots. We finally got to the first mark of the course…2.5 miles from the start…1 hr and 45 minutes after starting. Then when we approached the mark, the wind dies and the current pushed us back away from it. ABN 2 got around it that first time and looked to be gone. We eventually gybed around…tacking was not possible…and went for another shot at it. At one point on our second approach, we had gotten our boat speed up to a knot. But sure enough, just as we were getting close to the mark, the wind died again. We were alongside the mark so the current pushed us into it. The mark was also about 100 meter from a very large container ship. So with no steerage and no wind and some current, this whole situation was tricky and frustrating. We eventually got clear of the mark and did our penalty turn and got out of there. The whole fleet sailed into a south westerly breeze so thereafter.

Movistar did a nice job through it all and is leading. Brasil who had a lot of troubles with the mark and did a penalty turn as well was last for a while. They played the shore nicely and seem to have good speed to move into second place. We have been in third for a long time but just recently Ericsson has pulled up even with us. We are all on port tack now leaving the South African coast on a southerly course.

We are expecting to be on port of four or five hours while a small trough goes through, then to tack onto starboard for most of the day tomorrow. Tomorrow evening we will tack back onto port and cross the high pressure ridge to find the “highway” of strong westerly winds in a few days time to take us to the east at a fast rate of speed.

The conditions are very pleasant, 15 knots and smooth seas. We broke our radar off the mast during one of the tacks so we will have to fix the bracket tomorrow.

We had a tasty chicken curry tonight made by our food suppliers Real Expedition. The lottery for the favorite meal is now underway.

That is it for now. All is good on the Pirate ship.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

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It is that time of the year again. Time to wish everyone all the best for 2006.

It is that time of the year again. Time to wish everyone all the best for 2006.

For the Pirates, we are eagerly looking forward to getting out on the ocean and doing what we are here to do. The stay in Cape Town has been great, a lot of us have had our families here as they had vacation from school. But now it is time to get on with the racing and we feel that we and the Pearl are ready to fight is out with the other teams.

The forecast right now for January 2nd has us going on the wind for the first 48 hours in 25-30 knots of wind. This will make for a rough departure. Then we will probably cross a high pressure ridge working our way more south to hit the “highway”, the strong westerlies that lie south of 40 South, and be off and running with someone in the fleet possibly breaking the 24 hours record.

The boat is loaded and sitting at her berth in the Marina at the Volvo Ocean Race Village. We went for a short sail this morning as a final check or dress rehearsal. These are always good to do as inevitably you find something that your forgot to do or that did not get set up correctly. All is done now and we are taking off for New Years Eve (will be a mild one) and New Years Day which will the crew will have off. I want to climb to the top of Table mountain with my family tomorrow. The shore team will come in on New Years Day at 11:00 to tear down the base.

We will be onboard the Pearl at 1000 on Monday for a 1030 departure ceremony and 1300 start. The start is pretty simple here, just one buoy about 2 miles southwest of the starting line to keep the fleet close to shore and then we are off. The Race committee has set a couple of “Ice Waypoints” GPS positions that we have to

keep to the north of as big ice bergs have been spotted by satellite around 46S.

My next report will be from the navigation station.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

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Tough Day for the Pirates

Tough day for the Pirates today. The day started off with some bad news in that our man Justin (Juggy) Clougher was not able to sail due to a violent case of the stomach flu. We were lucky to have a very good sailor working in our sail loft, Jeremy Smith, being able to fill in and he did a great job. Poor Jeremy came on a day where we used the same spinnaker every downwind leg so he did nothing but pack sails all day.

The forecast was for a strong south easterly breeze and that is just what we had…up to 40 knots max. After the start, we got going to the right which was the favored side of the course. We rounded the top mark 4th but very close to ABN 2 and movistar whom we soon passed by setting the spinnaker while they sailed with a large genoa. We could not lay the reach mark…it was a run, and we had some close maneuvering with movistar as that mark. They broached (lost control of the boat) first and then we did the same. We got out of our mess first and had a nice solid lock on second from then on to the third windward mark. On the last run, we broached again and lost three boats. Movistar, ABN2 and Brasil 1. The race was shortened after the fourth windward leg so we did not have to do the last run. That was a good thing because we were out of spinnakers and we probably we not the only ones.

It was frustrating to lose three places like that on the last lap. We were definitely doing something wrong on the gybes in 35 knots of wind. As you can imagine, it takes a good amount of coordinationwith the crew, helmsman and swinging keel, to get those gybes to come off well. Obviously we did not have it worked out. After thinking about things and discussing with some of our team members who watched the race, we think we have identified the problem.

As frustrating as it was for us, there were two others who had a tougher day, Ericsson and Synergy.

We have to keep it positive now and just go on about our work in preparing for leg 2 to Melbourne. There will be plenty of opportunities to do things right and wrong over the next 6400 miles. We have to focus on preparing the boat and ourselves to the best level possible.

A lot of my time and that of navigator Jules Salter will be spent working with out meteorologist Jean Yves Bernot next week to get a good grip on the weather for the leg to Melbourne. Tomorrow and Wednesday we will be working on the boat. Later in the week we will take the boat out again and train for those windy conditions to make sure we have a better technique for the gybes.

Tomorrow night will be the Leg 1 Prize giving. It is usually a very nice event here in Cape Town from what I remember. The Pirates will be there in full colors, not expecting any prizes but saluting the winners. We will be wearing our special Pirate suits designed and supplied by Zegna.

Time to keep our chins up and look forward to another day.

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

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It is Christmas Eve and it doesn’t feel like it

Pirate Update, Cape Town December 24, 2005

It is Christmas Eve and it doesn’t feel like it…at least not for all us Northern Hemisphere people. It is a bright sunny day and the sun came up at 0500 and will set around 2100. But it is really nice down here and Africa is a very cool place to visit. Most of the team have some family down here visiting them which is nice.

We had a few days off earlier this week and got back to it on Thursday with a work day and got out on the water for a full day of short course training yesterday. On Monday we will race the in port race which is a 30 mile course around the buoys. We are looking forward to getting back out there and mixing it up with the other competitors. The forecast is for fairly strong wind so boat handling will be important in the outcome of the race. Yesterday we spent our time practicing starts and then sailing a triangle-windward-leeward course. The windward legs were three miles long and the reaches 2.2 miles. At the speeds we go, the reaching legs take 6 minutes….things have to happen fast with regard to sails up and sails down. And with just 11 people onboard, it is a real challenge.

The first in-port race in Sanxenxo was very light wind and therefore reasonably easy on the crew work. This one, if the breeze is up, will be action packed.

Today we are going out for another session at 0900-1200. It is 0730 and the wind is already up around 20 knots from the south east and forecast to build to 30 by late this afternoon.

Tonight we have a team and family members Christmas dinner in one of the bays just to the south of Cape Town. Santa will visit the young Pirates while the older will be treated to a special South African meal. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, we will not sail, then Monday is the race.

Thanks again to Pescanova and flying the boat down here which saved us a lot of time, we feel like we are ready to race both on Monday and on January 2nd for leg 2 to Melbourne. Getting that extra time really helped us get things put back together in a proper way and not be scrambling at the last minute.

On behalf of the Pirates of the Caribbean, Happy Holidays to all!

Paul Cayard

Pirates of the Caribbean

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