La Vagabonde's crossing

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by StuM

they've taken the numbers on their boat logs , multiplied the numbers by 2 until the baby was born and by 3 since then

I thought of the baby also and decided not to say anything.

[Breaking Waves]

im bored in bed.

Just some basics today - just looking at the 'northern route'.

short term situation is as expected

They are going for the northern route, but have been persistently (for several days now) a bit south of the route and have not gotten up in the more solid wind field and will likely have some lighter winds tomorrow.



The 28th, the next low fills in and they get some wind back.



you can see this wind profile in the first couple days on this histo



then you get to the next stage of the voyage, which is interesting

its a bit messy as it develops but a high drifts around over southern ireland and a (perhaps) low develops somewhere in the south. That huge low I mentioned before is blocked by the high and disappears up over Greenland. This is not settled - there are significant areas of slack pressure which are hard to forecast and stuff may drift around. We will ofc know better later on.

picture for the 4th



you can see in the wind speed histo above there will be some light air work, and there will be some upwind work (circled here) with potential e/ene winds



It does suggest that approaching from the NW will be beneficial.

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by Poa

La Vaga turned more eastward during the night to avoid a lull. It seems to have worked for them, when i checked they were at 10.3 knots.

yes, they managed that very well for the short term, and it gave them good vmg, but it did put them south of where the routing wanted them to be for light air coming up - they may have to pay for it tomorrow. The routing thought getting north was better . . . but there is a good saying about a bird in the hand.

In offshore racing, it is often (but certainly not always) the winner is not the outside flyer, nor the 'down the middle', but "well on the right side but not damn too far". You do get feedback with you have a racing fleet around you which helps play the right balance - when cruising you (usually) just have to go with your judgment and you don't know until much later (or ever) how it worked out.

[sebbiep]

As a lot of people are following this voyage in near real time, I've created an interactive app that is far more detailed than the officlal tracker. I'm new to social media and blogging - but I created a blog to host the app. You can view it at https://www.oceanshepherd.co.uk/

Let me know what you think of it - and especially if I made any mistakes with my great-circle spherical trigonometry calculations.



[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by atoll

fraud in my book

I follow your logic and it is indeed internally consistent. My approach would be to ask. Probably publicly. *grin*

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

im bored in bed.

Despite our differences I hope you recover quickly.

My wife had surgery last Friday. I practically had to sit on her to keep her resting for three days. She is back at work (home office) today but like you is typing with one hand.

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

In offshore racing, it is often (but certainly not always) the winner is not the outside flyer, nor the 'down the middle', but "well on the right side but not damn too far". You do get feedback with you have a racing fleet around you which helps play the right balance - when cruising you (usually) just have to go with your judgment and you don't know until much later (or ever) how it worked out.

The fourth option which hardly ever works goes like this:

"We are well and truly screwed. Our only shot is to take a flyer. We'll probably still lose but there will be better stories to tell and if the system everyone else is coasting on collapses we could do okay."

Definitely an act of desparation.

Story: Not offshore and only about 80 nm, light air, chasing one particular boat and watching the time to see if ANYONE would finish early enough to keep the race from timing out. All of a sudden the boat in front of us (maybe 100 m) fires up their engine, drops sails, and turns around. What do they know? What did they hear that we missed? Passing us on a reciprocal course they yelled over "we ran out of beer!" We did finish. Lot of DNF that race. The finishers needed allo vera. The DNFers needed rides home from the bar.

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by StuM

You can also see currents on windy.com

On this passage, I mostly have stopped looking at currents around 35-40W. Past that they have always seemed rather too fluky and random directional (and often just can't find a current where they are supposed to be - with ocean temp or boat speed) to be much use for routing. The windy data sort of agrees.

[Normanskier]

Originally Posted by atoll

even multiplying 22966nm by 2 ,to 45932nm,and adding 3200 for the baby to 49132nm this still leaves them 32263nm or roughly a circumnavigation short,from the 81395 nm that they would have people believe ....fraud in my book, if you were trying to sell a household product they would be in jail for making claims like this.

You need to get a life. Pathetic to get your jollies off by denigrating them.

[Poa]

If you keep quoting the haters' posts, blocking them is less effective. Consider adding them to your ignore list instead.


Looks like it will be another good day to get closer to Portugal.
Looking at windy.com, if they stay on the eastern course (slightly south perhaps) they will stick with the 20knot winds for another day or two and then encounter slightly lower winds. Not bad at all.

[Cherod]

Originally Posted by Davidasailor

I agree they’re likely counting the miles for each of them separately, much as many crews say things like “combined 99 years of sailing experience...”. That comes up to about 45,000 nm just in the passages. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to figure that in 8 years they could accumulate another 36,000 (combined) in side trips. That’s only moving the boat 187 miles per month on average. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Back to the OP’s intended purpose of the thread, I am very interested to see what they’ll do over the next few days with holes of light wind dancing around them, then the end of their trip with a possible change from the prevailing westerlies.

I don’t think it is a case of what they can do , it’ going to be a case of dealing with the cards as they get them ,, they don’t have boat speed to dictate much , my guess is just maintain their current rum line and hope for the best .

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by Cherod

my guess is just maintain their current rum line and hope for the best .

euro model has a bit more solid wind, with smaller holes. And it has been systematically better on the details . . . . so it may work out . . . worst case is a light air day, which they could probably enjoy to rest and eat and clean up the boat.

right now, if i were on board, i would not be too worried about the next couple days - try to do the right thing but not stress too much about it. I would be trying to understand the developments for the ending. Figure how to avoid a bunch of unnecessary upwind work or sitting around becalmed, and make sure they don't get rolled by a gale popping out of the clutter/slack areas.

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

On this passage, I mostly have stopped looking at currents around 35-40W. Past that they have always seemed rather too fluky and random directional (and often just can't find a current where they are supposed to be - with ocean temp or boat speed) to be much use for routing. The windy data sort of agrees.

My experience is that chasing ocean currents on a tactical basis is unwise. However, when there is a concentration of foul current it is well to avoid that. You just have to look at the data. A differential of a knot or two is a big deal.

Best practice for me is to keep looking at them and watch sea water temperature.

[Cherod]

Maybe the “ Atoll “ person has been around the world a few times but that does not give him a “ bye “ to insult and denegrade people without proper reason , understand of information , round the world a few times but he has a lot to learn about common decency , preaching to apart from
Exile and one or two others , a very small minority of people on here , what is his problem , is he jealous that he has been r t w three times and nobody knows who he is apart from a forum grouping whereas Vagy is very popular worldwide , man up “‘ atoll “ , if you want to know the full explanation of the sea mileage then go ask them !! there are more important things in life than having sailing round the world !!!

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I'm really sorry! To a speedy recovery!

thanks. it could have been worse - I just look like I lost a bare fist boxing match rather badly.

Usually, I am hammering along, doing some sort of intervals - and paying alot of attention to everything, but yesterday I was just out for a nice pleasurable late fall ride. Might have had my guard down.

Do you have sailing plans for next summer - i don't think i have seen any discussion yet? Usually, you have winter questions lined up

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on routing & currents . . . . the programs all have the capability to include a current grib. It will then factor that into its calculations. That is standard practice for sailing off the US east coast. The only other place I regularly use it is down below S. Africa, where you can (we have) actually (usually) get favorable current going either way if you do the right routing.

Chasing weak currents can be very frustrating. I have spent time chasing 'forecast' current which I never find, or it is different than it was supposed to be.

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

on routing & currents . . . . the programs all have the capability to include a current grib. It will then factor that into its calculations. That is standard practice for sailing off the US east coast. The only other place I regularly use it is down below S. Africa, where you can (we have) actually (usually) get favorable current going either way if you do the right routing.

Chasing weak currents can be very frustrating. I have spent time chasing 'forecast' current which I never find, or it is different than it was supposed to be.

As I said, chasing fair currents is an exercise in frustration. We agree.

The Gulf Stream is a factor across the Atlantic. It's why the roses are so lovely in England. Lots of energy there. The Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico is a big deal. You can get pretty pear-shaped in the South Atlantic and parts of the Pacific. OSCAR has been a major plus for routing.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

. . . Do you have sailing plans for next summer - i don't think i have seen any discussion yet? Usually, you have winter questions lined up . . . .

Thread drift, but to answer your question, the boat is in Denmark rather than Cowes for the winter, and I am either doing a triangle Norway-Svalbard-Jan Mayen-Scorsebysund-Iceland and leave the boat in Iceland. Or I am just going to have another leisurely Baltic cruise like this year.


Which plan will depend on my work and whether my business partners will let me go to the Arctic when we are in the middle of a project.



I had a splendid time this year just knocking around the archipelagos with a most jolly crew who came and went, plus my best friend from childhood who came over from the States for a month on board (which goes by so fast . . . ). If I can't get away to the Arctic, I'll just repeat that.


I toyed with the idea of retracing the Mayflower route on the 400th anniversary (I am a direct descendant of the pilot of the Mayflower). Would have been really interesting to try to use that unconventional routing, but my boat does pretty well upwind. But for tax reasons I need to avoid spending any extended time in the U.S., so that's been scrubbed.