Stories from the Atlantic: Grey Goose' and Sojana' reports

Grey Goose's  Diary (November 24, 2011)
«We are now on day three and have been pushing the boat hard and are very happy with our position to the north of our competitors. After the start, we had a short ten mile beat around the northern side of Tenerife and ten escaped the Canaries to the north – which is a pretty unusual strategy for this time of year and we have largely been racing in downwind conditions for the last 600 miles.
We have had some fantastic ‘champagne trade wind sailing’ – spinnakers, sunshine and shorts…just not the bubbly stuff.
It hasn’t all been a doddle though. We have long nights here and have had to deal with winds to force 7 and some lumpy seas that have seen us surfing to speeds over 20 knots at times, though mostly we have been averaging about 13 knots. That may not sound fast, but on a 44 ton yacht, it is. The loads are on the rigging and spinnaker sheets are huge and we have seen our fair share of breakages. Fortunately we have been able to keep the boat going over ten knots at all times, though it has taken some resourceful crew work to keep the show on the road and keep the ‘pedal to the metal’.
Our biggest problem so far was the heavy duty A7 spinnaker ripping in half. That is a job for tomorrow and could take 7-8 hours. Our specialist sail trimmer, Ed Hill (also a sail maker) did a great job today repairing our new A4. The attachment point for the halyard was virtually worn through and luckily we noticed it in the middle of mini drama when one of the control lines broke.
«The A4 is our heavy weight downwind running ‘kite’ and the reinforced headboard is rather like 3cm thick cardboard, that you can hardly bend. We had to make up some new attachment loops and then in order to sew them to the headboard, ‘Bear’ had to hammer  about 50 holes with a sail makers spike to ream the holes, before Ed could stitch it a massive needle and needing pliers and the good old ‘sail makers palm’ to get the needle through. The repair took five hours, so we were all happy to get our trusty kite back into the air and Grey Goose back up to speed again.
«We are now ‘close reaching’ without spinnaker, as we have carefully positioned ourselves to head between a tropical low pressure system to the north of us and a large area of light winds to the south that will see some boats slow right down. We can expect the wind to veer from strong southerly winds to much cooler northerly winds on Thursday afternoon. We can even expect our first strong tropical rain.
So where are we coming in the race. Well the tracker system doesn’t seem to be very impressive and sometimes doesn’t update our position, but I would say that we leading on corrected time so far. In fact before the start, we never thought we would be any where near this advanced on our larger rivals at this stage.
…….
«Everyone onboard is getting on really well and supporting each other. Right now starboard watch is on deck, with the owner Tobias Koenig on the helm, Andy Hudson making coffees in the galley, with Ed and Bear trimming. Port watch are meant to be asleep, unfortunately Christian is struggling to sleep; hopefully he will drift off now we are on a steadier course this evening.
«As I type we now have 2057 miles to go. Hopefully after the rain associated with the cold front tomorrow that we will encounter tomorrow, we will soon be clear and we will be back to some more ‘champagne sailing’ by Friday morning?

Mike Broughton, Navigator, and the crew of Grey Goose, November 24, 2011

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sojana' Diary (November 23, 2011)

«Hi All,  onboard Sojana everything is well.
«We have a good speed with our spinnaker, a good ambiance onboard, a perfect food... And the most important: the thermosalinograph is running, and we have deployed our first, -of a serie of 4 - profiler Arvor.
As you know, Sojana is a 35-meter long ketch designed by Farr Yacht Design and built in the Green Marine yards (owner Mr. Peter Harrison) in Cowes, England. She was launched in September, 2003 and celebrated her 100.000 nautical miles of sailing navigation in 2010.
From the very beginning of her design this yacht has been designed to be environmental friendly. One year ago, the association 4myplanet, chaired by ….myself, Alexia Barrier, installed a themosalinograph on board. The aim is to collect sea surface data in order to contribute to ocean research and more specifically to provide data to the Coriolis data centre and the GOSUD (Global Ocean Surface Underway Data) program. This high accuracy scientific instrument is fully automated and raised. Until now, about one million of Sea Surface temperature (SST) and Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) measurements have been collected. In September 2011, looking for floats deployment opportunities, french scientists, in charge of global ocean observations, contacted Mark Fitzgerald - skipper of the Superyacht - through the association 4myplanet. Mark Fitzgerald accepted with enthusiasm this new challenge and to put on board Sojana ….4 Arvor profiling floats and deploy them across the Atlantic Ocean during his next transatlantic race.
The Coriolis Project is a project that contributes to the global ocean in situ observing system. The Coriolis data centre is in charge of data management from the surface and along the water column up to more than 2,000 meter depth.
Data collected and distributed are:
- temperature profiles acquired with XBT probes when ships are en route;
⁃ temperature, salinity and other parameters profiles acquired with CTD when ships are on station;
⁃ measures collected with fixed moorings;
⁃ measures collected with surface drifters;
⁃ temperature profiles acquired with Argo profilers.
- Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Surgface Salinity measurements collected when ships are en route.
The Argo profiling floats are designed to collect data from the surface to a parking depth (4.00 to 1.000 meters). During 10 days they drift at this parking depth and they reach their maximum depth that is currently 2.000 meters. Finally, they profile again from 2.000 m to the surface and when they pop-up they are able to transmit the collect data to a shore station through a satellite link. Once all the data have been succesfully transmitted they dive again for another cycle. They can perform cycles during about 3 years (about 100 cycles)».

Alexia Barrier, onboard Sojana, November 23, 2011