Is the world ending? The polar ice caps are melting and the Gulf Stream is not here.
It all started with a patch of high pressure east of the Race Start. It looked to slow down the boats making the shortest distance to the finish route heading due east. Did it have to be that way? There was this alternative idea that you could head south and pick up 3kts of current. This would cost about 100 miles but you'd circumnavigate the wind hole and maybe slow just a little when it passed ahead of you, but by this point you'd be in 3kts of tide.
We passaged south, and by the middle of the night we were in what we thought was the Gulf Stream, making good speeds. I decided to get some sleep. The forecast was to go to the west or west-south-west, meaning we would sail perfectly through the Gulf Stream and then back through it as we were lifted on our port tack.
A few hours later I was woken up with the question: I'm not sure if we should tack. This perplexed me since the plan was to do 90 degrees until we lifted to 80 course over ground. We couldn't possibly tack as we were flying a spinnaker. I quickly came to the nav station to realise that the wind was from the north and in fact we had sailed out of the current and did indeed need to tack.
Predictably the forecast was unpredictable and the new one came in showing the wind hole we were to find ourselves in. We had sailed south out of the Gulf Stream and Punta del Este was nowhere to be seen. They had been two miles behind on our tail when I went to sleep but I guess with the change of wind they had downed the Code and hoisted a Yankee to keep the desired course in the Gulf Stream.
A new plan:
Ok it was painful but it wasn’t the end of the world. We would need to drop the Code, hoist the Yankee and climb back into the current. End of. Wrong.
Now being so far south we were more affected by the wind hole and did 1.2 knots average for 12 hrs.
The rest of the time has been spent sailing very slowly northwards in search of the elusive current that has dictated the UK weather for thousands of years. Until this time (02:30 UK time) despite sailing in the middle of 50 mile corridors supposedly hosting 2-3 knots of current in our favour, after 100 miles of sailing we have only ever been going slower than our numbers suggest we should.
We have even checked to make sure we were trailing anything from the bottom of the boat..
Well what to do next? Having sailed 100 miles south to find no advantage, and after a 12 hour stationary period, we set about finding the current. We have now travelled back to the same line as we started. This route should have been boat speed plus 2-3 knots at all times but we have found only boat speed minus between a half and one knot.
So the position... 12 hrs down in the wind hole is circa 100 miles deficit. Two days sailing in negative half a knot of current instead of predicted 2.5 kts means a loss of 150 miles. This is 250 miles behind where I thought we'd be and 200 miles behind the fleet.
We need to watch this space now as there is a huge challenge to catching up. A ridge of high pressure engulfs this area in a few days. There’s a danger it will cloud the boats at the back of the fleet and allow the front to extend by the same amount again. Keeping fingers crossed for a little bit of good fortune in the coming 13 days.