Mike Golding Yacht Racing

Mike Golding, Skipper of Gamesa, takes us through the course of the Vendée Globe, in six easy steps ….

From the start to the Doldrums:
“ The start of the race is always interesting with the Bay of Biscay in November which is usually a challenge of some description. Even now we are tracking the weather and as usual it is quite a complex picture, it is not entirely clear this far out.

“Biscay can be pretty violent at this time of year and over my time I have seen just about everything. We have had easy starts where you just get lifted around the corner and that is the ideal situation for each team, but you can also be thrust out there into a lot of breeze, a lot of manoeuvres and the difficulty of trying to round Finisterre which is the last major hazard in terms of shipping, but there are other hazards like fishing boats. When you get to Finisterre it can be quite busy and there is often an acceleration of the breeze so you can decide to go in and cut the corner, or try and push out to the west. So there is a choice to be made there.

“Once you are round Finisterre the race course opens up for you. You are making your choice at that point, how far to push west which is largely determined by what is happening much further to the south or off the coast of Africa.

“As a general rule you are going into a high pressure system so you have a rotation to the right, and in general that means the further west you get the better angle you will have as you exit the bottom of the high pressure. You will spend less time going downwind and more time at hotter, faster angles. Getting west is generally a benefit. However some skippers like heading down the coast of Africa, but the problem there is that at some point you have to make the decision to get back to the west. Everyone will aim for a doldrums crossing between 25 and 27 West.

“ At that point you are trying to line up for your Doldrums crossing. You generally want to find a window to the west where the wind is easterly and dying and becoming variable. It is a very dynamic area you can have squalls, pretty serious squalls.”

Into the South
“Then you are looking for the SE’ly flow into the southern hemisphere. You are just sailing fast angles and steadily getting lifted and joining the South Atlantic high pressure rotation until you are going downwind again. It is a right hand shift and the objective then is to just get south as quick as possible.

“So here the question is whether you can cut the corner on the high pressure, saving miles.

“ You can lose out very badly here if you try to cut the corner. The risky strategy is to be left and the less risky is to be right. People will take the risk and it can be very beneficial and there are choices to be made based on the data you have at the time. Going right keeps you away from the high pressure system, but if you are left you are the first to be caught and the last to be released.

“The weather starts to get colder and you are quickly at 35-40S and the southern hemisphere is much colder, 40S is getting pretty chilly. And then you are pushing south as far the course waypoint will allow you, trying to get into the strongest windflow first. You are looking all the time as to where you will pick up the depressions, but to be fair it is more of a westerly airflow generated rather than the actual depressions which are tracking a bit further south.”

Taking the gates
There are eight gates which are designed to keep the fleet north of the worst of the ice, and within range of the Australian search and rescue operations. Mike continues ….

“Then you are really controlled by the gates and the position of the gates. The best that can happen with the gates is that they really don’t influence your optimum route. But that is quite unusual because generally your fastest route is a lot further south than the route you are allowed to sail.

“The worst that can happen is you have taken the most right hand option to the gate [ie going furthest south] and you end up fighting to get the gate, typically that is when you are coming back up and the low is generating headwinds for you.

“In fact when you are past the Cape of Good Hope and there is a succession of gates, there are so many that you are sailing the great circle route, going south to sail shortest distance, between the gates, so initially you will set your great circle to be going to the furthest away point of the next gate. But then as you approach you will determine if you can cut that corner a little.

“Sometimes you are almost running a more direct rhumb line route [straight line], sailing on a latitude. You run the numbers and it shows the great circle route is saving you miles but there is not much in it.

“Into the south, the first datum point is the Kerguelens and Crozet island group. They are not significant in terms of leaving a wind turbulence, the shoal water around the Kerguelens creates some nasty wave patterns, so passing to the north of the Kerguelens can get you into some nasty stuff.

“And from there almost right the way around the rest of the world, the only other waypoints of note are the ones under Australia.”

Under Australia and watching for ice
“ Here you are fighting with the fact there is usually a high pressure in the Australian Bight and the waypoint is sucking you up towards the high. And the low pressures are kept to the south by this high. Once you are past that you are into a sequence of gates which take you to Cape Horn.

“In terms of ice the highest intensity is likely to be somewhere around Kerguelen and then south of New Zealand and possibly on the approach to Cape Horn. That is the areas I have seem most ice. It’s a bit of a paradox because the more information we have it almost leads you to be more nervous and in 2000 we had next to no information and I saw lots of ice, but we were much further south, down at 62S. This time I doubt we will go much south of 55S.

“Across the Pacific you are at a fairly constant latitude, just dealing with the succession of depressions and then the approach to Cape Horn is always a bit nerve racking, especially if there is a strong low arriving. My worst Cape Horn was on the Challenge Race when we had 55-60kts from the east!

“The passage of Cape Horn is one thing but then you are looking to save miles at the Le Maire Straits. The tides there are strong 4-5kts and if it is wind against tide it may not be the most desirable to cut the corner, but it is quite a big corner and you’d be tempted to cut it in nearly any circumstances.”

The South Atlantic return
“ Next is the Falkland Islands and they are nearly always in the way, and so you have to decide which to pass. Then you are looking at your passage up the Brazilian coast where the winds can be very shifty, a big diurnal shift. And you are on the breeze, not to far in. You don’t want to be too close in or the coast forces you to tack.

“You can make some gains in the South Atlantic on the way back up, classically if there is a big ridge stretching out into the course from the River Plate, that can slow leading boats down and give chasing boats a chance. Argentina is an area of cyclogenesis where low pressure systems are generated and those depressions can be very beneficial if you can get a little ride on one.”

Heading home, hopefully?
“Finally you are upwind into warmer waters aiming for a Doldrums west of 25 deg and back into the Atlantic you are looking to see if you can cut the corner a bit. Usually you will be on a heading aiming at something like the Azores, heading north looking to pick up the westerly flow to get back into Biscay, back to Les Sables d’Olonne. But it is January, there can be some big, stormy depressions. The boat is tired, you are tired and you are hoping not to be arriving on the Brittany coast in 50kts and snow.

“The start, the first few days and the Doldrums and the South Atlantic high are probably the most stressful. But the biggest stress is towards the end, when the boat is tired and you are tired and the fear is arriving back in Biscay and getting trashed. Things do start to go wrong then.”

General choices….
“I’d like to think I am not a person who likes to take big flyers, I like to sail the fleet and take my moments to make little gains. In the last edition we were in the south and Virbac-Paprec 3 and I made a gybe to the south, losing miles but we came back – it was a four or five hours gybe – and we got to the head of the fleet.

“The routing software is really good now, and more importantly the data we are putting in is much better, to the point that we are doing what it says to do not because it says it but because it is the right thing to do.”