The end of the long and winding road to the Doldrums is in sight. But the light at the end of the tunnel is going to be a train coming the other way for some of these crews, as the fleet scatters across the Pacific. Measured from the south-west to the north-east, the spread from PUMA to Green Dragon is now over 200 miles – that’s a whole lot of leverage, and not everyone will have got it right.

At 10:00 ZULU the fleet was blasting south-east, well and truly into the north-east trade winds. The wind speed (TWS in the Data Centre) was back up to 20 knots, and the wave height was up to six metres (MAX_WV_HGT). Back to life at the extreme and with everyone sailing on the same south-easterly course (within ten degrees) it looks like the skippers and navigators have all picked their lane for the re-entry into the Doldrums.

At the front of the fleet, Ericsson 4 and PUMA are inseparable on the leaderboard, still just a handful of miles apart on the Distance to Leader (DTL) measure. But they are drifting apart on the water – now separated by over 40 miles west-to-east. Behind them, Ericsson 3 has taken a good 50 miles out of the leaders on the DTL, as you can see in today’s graph. This has been at the expense of her windward position. She’s sailed a wider, faster wind angle (TWA) into the wake of her sistership, according to the Race Viewer. Ericsson 3 is now just over 60 miles directly behind her. Not bad for a boat that started seven hours late.

Meanwhile, to the north, we have another milestone in Telefonica Blue’s comeback – they passed Ian Walker and the Green Dragon on the 01:00 ZULU Position Report earlier this morning. After hitting a rock just before the start in Qingdao, forcing them to haul the boat out for repair and start 19 hours late, Bouwe Bekking and his team are just about back in the game.

I say ‘just about’ because these two boats are a 100 miles apart east to west. The earlier, unconfirmed sighting of Wouter the Router, alive and well and navigating aboard Green Dragon, is now a positive ID. I might have been premature in announcing the Dragon’s move east a couple of days ago, but there’s no doubt about it now – they are set up for a Doldrums passage significantly to the east of the rest of the fleet.

Skipper, Ian Walker, confirms their thinking in his latest email, telling us how they’ve been helped along by a wind direction (TWD) that has made getting east cheap. Unfortunately, we can’t confirm that, as the Green Dragon’s instruments still aren’t reporting back to Race Office. Although the breeze has certainly veered (rotated clockwise) for the leaders, they are sailing a much tighter wind angle today than yesterday, in order to hold their south-easterly course – visible in the TWA graph.

Walker also suggested that their strategy is motivated to some degree by their boat speed deficiency, which he blames on a lighter keel weight, and less righting moment. Righting moment is fundamental to boat speed when you are sailing on a reach or upwind.

So place your bets – is this a calculated risk or wild gamble?

Should I start by pointing out that the Dragon was the star performer in the Atlantic Doldrums crossing? While over on the west wing of the fleet, PUMA are zip for two against the Doldrums, as skipper Ken Read reminded us a couple of days ago. No, I probably shouldn’t.

In his latest email, Bouwe Bekking points again at the reason this Doldrums crossing is so much tougher than on Leg 1. There is no prior racing history to give them a point to aim at in the Doldrums, in contrast to the well worn route through 27-31 degrees W in the Atlantic. Nevertheless, Bekking and his navigator, Tom Addis, (doubtless aided by their met consultant, Roger ‘Clouds’ Badham’) have used the historical data to pick a point to aim for – but they aren’t sharing that piece of information.

Jules Salter was riffing on the same theme in another great audio interview with Guy Swindells yesterday. Salter’s point was that the weather they need to carry them past New Zealand and into the Southern Ocean, ‘hasn’t even been formed.’ Or as he put it when I talked to him in Qingdao, they are making decisions before the ‘butterfly even flaps its wings’.

This is the second horn of the dilemma. The weather forecasts don’t go far enough ahead in time to tell them where to aim at in the Doldrums. I’ve set up today’s Predicted Route image with the boat positions in five days time, along with the weather for four days time. And you can see that this only takes them to the Solomon Islands, at about 10 degrees S. The breeze has softened and veered (rotated clockwise) into an easterly direction. But they’re still not in the Doldrums proper, never mind the south-east trades.

Conclusion?

There’s no real way of judging how the Dragon’s eastern play is going to work out at this stage. My view is that if Walker and his team had the boat speed of the leaders they would be taking a wild gamble, but because they’re struggling for speed, I think they’ve taken a calculated risk.

All of which brings me to the first of the topics from yesterday’s Comments section. Edward Trevelyan asked about the ‘best’ route – the great circle (more on that in a moment) is the shortest. But that is rarely the best, assuming that best means fastest. The quickest route depends completely on the weather. The quickest route can be calculated in hindsight, using the historical weather data. The method uses the same techniques as we use for our Predicted Route and Data calculations, which is explained in some detail in the FAQ section on the Welcome page of the Data Centre.

The link to the rhumb line explains the difference quite clearly

But, and this is part of the same issue we’ve been discussing above, the problem with Leg 5 is that calculating the fastest route using the historical data throws up very different answers (up to 2000 miles different), depending on factors that you don’t know about when you have to make the decision to go one way or another.

So although the historical weather studies point to an eastern transit of the Doldrums being fastest, ever since Magellan went through the Pacific the weather’s been erratic and it wouldn’t take much to change things. If the butterfly flaps its wings and all that …

And regarding the great circle – Jan Simonson accurately pointed out that I used the word rhumb line inaccurately a couple of days ago, when I really meant great circle. The irony is that even if I didn’t know better – and I certainly should – the link I’ve been using to rhumb line (this isn’t the first time I’ve made the mistake) explains the difference quite clearly. One slapped wrist.

On the same theme, Freddy and Roland asked about the orthodromy line in the Race Viewer. It doesn’t touch the virtual ice gate lines because the boats can touch the gates anywhere, so which point would they be drawn to? But maybe there’s a better solution to this than the one we have at the moment - and, yes, having now clicked on the Orthodromy icon, the line looks odd to me too. I’ve passed all this on to the Viewer team.

And on the topic of the ice gates – sorry, Euan, while my description of the ice gates may be terrible, it’s also how the sailing instructions are currently written. They just have to touch the virtual lines – i.e. the boat doesn’t have to pass through them, although it would be wise to do so, to make sure. And they must touch them whether they are passing to the north or the south of the gates. However, given the amount of easting the fleet has already made, this part is currently under review. Watch this space, more on ice gates as we get closer.

Jim Porter’s suggestion was that each team should be allowed a couple of sets of rudders, dagger boards and keel fins, so Telefonica Blue wouldn’t have been penalised for changing their rudders. I can’t comment for the Race Office, but I suspect the idea of this rule is to keep the cost down – not such a bad thing in these straitened times.