Crew Blog

South doesn’t rhyme with much

25 October 2007

This may be clear to all, but it does make it more difficult for us to come up with a catchy strapline for our Race 3 strategy.

You can probably already see that the fleet has split in two, with five boats heading in a more southerly direction than the others. We’re part of this southerly pack and have a working title of ‘Stubbornly Southern’. The other option is ‘Southern Comfort’ - to which we can add a ‘dis-’ when it all starts getting a bit hairy. Other suggestions on a postcard to ’Nova Scotia Clipper, South Atlantic Ocean’ please.

The reason for heading south is that you tend to get a steady flow of high pressure systems moving west to east between (roughly) Uruguay and South Africa. In the southern hemisphere the wind in high pressure systems blows anti-clockwise so the plan is to head south of the systems where the wind is from the west and ride it all the way across the South Atlantic. This takes us off the Great Circle route (the most direct path) but we believe it will see us right in the long-term.

You can therefore expect some more ‘where on Earth are they going?’ moments in the first couple of weeks - hopefully our stubborn southern-ness should then start to pay off!

All is well aboard the good ship Nova Scotia - some minor seasickness from a couple of the new joiners but otherwise everything’s going swimmingly. Lots of helm training going on so that everyone’s up to speed when we get to crunch time and plenty of trimming to keep us zipping along.

Until the next post, I’ll sign off with ‘South is, err… best!’

Chris ‘JC’ Wicks

The picture shows the Great Circle route vs Nova Scotia‘s current course.