La Taberna del Puerto

[Ocell (3NY)]

Orange II navigator Roger Nilson describes their progress so far
This morning 12 February, at 1003 GMT, we are 19 days out from the start of this incredable adventure. I call it an adventure even if we are racing against the clock, our virtual opposition being the maxi cat Cheyenne.
Cheyenne (ex-Playstation) last year made a stunning passage around the globe and we all knew it was going to be hard to beat her time of just 58.5 days. Cheyenne was at that time a well-tuned, massive racing machine, with exellent crew and experienced wind conditions that could best be described as a gift from heaven. "Never more than 38 knots and never less then 10 knots of true wind speed," as watch leader Brian Thompson told me afterwards. Cheyenne had some serious brake downs which the crew fixed in a creative and determined way. She smashed the previous record, held by Bruno Peyron and Orange, by six days.

Last year on Orange II we made two attemps to better Cheyenne's record non-stop around the world but at both times we had to return due to unavoidable teething problems that any newly born maxi-cat will have. When we came back from the Cape Verdes after abandoning the second record attempt, we had a sad cat with it's tail between her legs. The lesson was hard but the message clear. One has to treat this as a mountain climbing expedition: Preparation, preparation and preparation.

Since then we have made thousands of technical refinements and improvements to Orange II, from the material used in reef lines to pulling out both main engines to save weight. In every way we have been aiming for a more efficient, stronger, smarter and lighter maxi-catamaran.

Last summer more lessons were learned and Bruno became very aware of what it was necessary to do in order to improve his truly extraordinairy racing machine significantly. During three months last autumn, this complex creature was taken to pieces at the 'Base le Défi' in Lorient and a massive refit carried out under the management of Bruno and Yves le Blevec. As a result the boat is 1.5 tons lighter, stronger and far more efficient than before.

Bruno put a lot of thought into creating his team and crew and decided to stay with mostly the same group as last winter. The 'team building' was in one way already done and it is a big advantage to have a group of people who know their tool and feel confidence and trust with each other and their machine.

When we started on 24 January we all felt we had a boat that was easy to control, that responded well on the helm, was easier to reef and was fitted with better sails, etc. The helm was improved due to the fitting of new larger rudders. Previously it had been like giving a new Formula 1 racing car to Michael Schumacher and him realising after a few training laps that the car was impossible to steer on certain type of bends.

The crew of Orange II were therefore very happy to notice the huge difference the new rudders made that gave them the opportunity to tame their wild cat, to drive it in a straight line without it wanting to jump off the road into the bushes any more.

A few days after the boat was ready we were lucky to find an inviting 'weather window' open up. This window could enable us to put the Equator behind our backs in about seven days - not a demanding 6.5, just a plain 7. Looking for a better window that might have enabled us to reach the Equator in less than seven days could have taken the rest of the winter and we could have ended up helplessly watching time run out...

Here is one more way a Jules Verne Trophy attempt is similar to a climbing expedition in the Himalayas. When you have reached base camp you are very much in the hands of the weather. The situation is the same for us. When we get to the Equator, which is as far as down the track as anyone can make a reliable prognosise of the weather prior to leaving, we have also reached a point when it is psycologically hard to turn back. Beyond the Equator we are entirely in the hands of Mother Nature. To make a successful attempt it is necessary to make the best use of any driving energies given to us and to handle the navigational on board are Bruno and myself, but also support from on shore.

Our excellent shore-based weather team had hinted about a possible TGV [the fast and highly efficient French train] that potentially could give us the 'Golden Ride', needed to get across the often windless middle part of the South Atlantic. The TGV would be starting from around 30S 25W, southeast of Rio de Janeiro. A classic cold front, sitting in between two highs in the South Atlantic was predicted to move east on around 4 February. Could we make it there in time? This front, as with any TGV, would not wait for it's last passanger to arrive. If the cold front was there, then we had to make use of it for sure. We knew if we missed that train we would stall in the windless station close to the island of Trindade, east of Rio. That would mean spending days and days trying to fight our way through or around a big high pressure system.

So off we went on the morning of 24 January with every intention to get down to our 'train station' before the TGV departed. All looked good until we reached a latitude just south of the Canaries. We were bowling along in solid northeasterly trade winds until someone suddenly turned off the fan. A low cloud cover came and suddenly the trade winds were gone as if someone had thrown the 'off' switch.

We spent two days in unstable conditions and with our hopes of a fast passage south slowly vanishing. But things changed suddenly to the better when we re-encountered the lost trade winds just south of the Cape Verde Islands. Where the trades are supposed to get weaker they got more powerful. This was great

The next gift was that we encountered little in the way of the Doldrums allowing us to reach the Equator in a respectable seven days three hours. A 400 nm day passage through the Doldrums is good even for the largest multihull.

The southeast trades, generated by the high further south, were a bit more easterly than normal and the big cat was flying south. A few days later we were there at the station right on the button. And the famous cold front system? The miracle had happened - the front was right where it was supposed to be! But there was a small problem: we needed to push east but the waves were too bad to make a fast passage safetly. We had to run due south for a few hours before the seaway had organised itself allowing us to turn left.

Twice we came very, very close to missing our fast lane ride southeast into the Roaring Forties. Twice we got almost becalmed but we managed to wiggle ourselves east. Finally Orange II put her port flank into the fresh northerly and we were off like a scalded cat... The sleigh ride had started.. Orange II was feeling at home with the fast wind angle and we were literally carried across the whole Southern Atlantic in three days at speeds and on a course you would not dream about in this area of the world. We covered almost 2,000 miles in three days. Our luck was amazing and we could be nothing but grateful and thank our weather team and crew for doing a fantastic job.

Tristan da Cunha, the Southern Atlantic archipelago, was literally flying by as our average speed exceeded 30 knots like a giant surfboard on a 3,000 miles long wave. All of a sudden we realised we had sailed from the English Channel to the longitude of Cape of Good Hope, 630nm south of Cape Town, in just 14 days and a few hours.

The next chapter in this story was the icebergs. Bruno, who is a very responsible and well organised skipper, had set up a no-go zone, west to east on his computer chart. "Down to here just north of the Antartic convergence but no further..." was his decree. And right he was, the line set a degree of latitude north of the Convergence Zone where ice cold water, often below 5 degC, and icebergs tend to hang out.

"ICEBERGS AHEAD...!! someone shouted from on deck. Up I went and perhaps
30m on our beam a growler, a mini iceberg , was rushing by while we continued at our normal boat speed of 28 knots. This was scary as hell as I am not sure we would have seen it during the night, even with radar. It was a few metres high, crystal blue, looking like a huge double ice cream cone turned upside down. A bit further a way were two larger icebergs and this was at nearly 49degS around an hour before we were due to gybe northeast away from the ice.

We had already before been suspecting that our radar was malfunctioning. Our situation was scary enough with the bergs but more so when we realised we could not see them - not even the big ones - with our brand new radar set. Just a week before we left we had replaced the radar with a more powerful 4kw set. The old radar had worked but at 2kw was a bit weak. After hearing about all the ice observed by the boats in Vendée Globe we decided at the last moment to change the radar. Perhaps this was left a bit too late as we had no chance to test it offshore before leaving. It seemed to work well in the harbour but offshore... We passed close to Marion Island to make a test after consulting a technical expert. But the radar remained as dead as a dodo.

So here we are in the Southern Ocean with a superfast boat without a radar to see things in the dark. Regardless of whether we had radar or not Bruno took the wise decision to take a slower route to keep boat and crew on a safer latitude. We decided to gybe back and forth down a narrow corridor. To the south at around 48degS was the ice and to the north light winds at around 46degS. We did not want either which meant extra gybes versus playing Russian Roulette if we headed further south.

After passing Marion Island, Bruno decided to go sniffing at the edge of his no-go zone. Once again 60 nm north of the no-go zone we passes another nasty flat growler and it's mother berg a few miles away. It would have been unlikely that this growler would have been picked up by even a working radar.

On Amer Sport One in the last Volvo Ocean Race we had played Russian Roulette with icebergs when we were southeat of New Zealand, zigzagging between more then 100 icebergs over two days...! It was not the kind of experience anyone wished to repeat. Obviously the growlers all disappear or sink at nighttime, but there is the scary fact that even a good radar does not pick up many of these death traps. To go through an area of bergs is like driving your car through a minefield and just keeping your fingers crossed hoping for the best...

Last night we passed just north of the island Kerguelen, the halfway mark in the Indian Ocean. A nice fresh northwesterly breeze is building after a few days of moderate westerlies. The prognosis is pleasant with fast speeds taking downwind to New Zealand where we have set ourselves another gate due to the latest ice observations. We have decided to pass in between the southernost tip of New Zealand and Auckland Island due osouth at almost 51 degrees - a 200 nautical mile corridor which also will serve as the gateway to the Pacific Ocean.

But the next checkpoint is the longitude of Cape Leeuwin, which we are most likely to pass at good speed the day after tomorrow (Monday).
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