0:17
Okay, now let's look in more detail on how to get back from the southern ocean,
wrap around Cape Horn back to Barcelona First obstacle, the South Atlantic, right?
In the beginning, it's fairly easy.
You can see the leading boats here have left Cape Horn, right?
They are still in the west.
Some of those west sweep up all the way north to.
0:38
Well, depending on where you're from... The Falkland Islands.
Right, but they never get further North than that.
You can see some low pressure activity off the Cabo Frio cold front
that we've mentioned before, high pressure cell here in front of
Argentina up to River Plate, Rio la Plata, Uruguay.
Weak high pressure over here at Santa Elena, over here there's another cell,
and as a result you can see that the south east trades are quite weak.
Here for the competitors again,
it will trying to ride as westerly as long as possible.
Decide which side of this high cell you go because normally sort of
drifts towards the east.
Sometimes if you try to go all the way around like that, you don't make it.
You actually have to work around the back of it, right?
But the overall objective here then is to get through
Cabo Frio cold front as quick as possible.
That's the transition variable with variable winds.
Also it's a bit of triangle shaped.
It's got a foot basically here.
It's easier to get through it further east, than closer to the coast.
And then get into the south easterly trade winds, which as we know they're
easterly over here, north easterly over here, and they get more and
more southeast as we go up towards the doldrums in the tropical conversion.
That's fairly easy this time, because as you remember on
the beginning coming down the Atlantic, it was all about going west,
trying to find as narrow a spot in the doldrums, here we are already west, so
we're already lined up for a good point to get through the doldrums.
Let's have a look how it works out here.
2:18
Alright?
So there we go, this boat is riding the westerlies for
everything it's worth, you can see the high pressure cell here.
This low [INAUDIBLE] cold front is moving rapidly towards the southeast.
They can't really hang onto that, and this
high pressure cell is getting stronger and stronger.
These [INAUDIBLE] have decided to try to work their way around the east of it.
Alright?
The boats that are coming around to Cape Horn right now,
they don't have the luxury to decide that the sails already well established,
they have to decide do I go up the West side this high pressure cell?
Or what do I do?
Here you can see, maintain this option.
Go east, try to sail around this area of light rare.
You can see that it's northerly.
It's upwind. It's slow anyway.
And try to get on top of it through the gulf front into the easterly trade winds.
3:28
Here you go. Here's the first...
set of boats coming through, right?
High pressure sails sitting over here, where do I go?
Do I go around this?
Long way around or the shorter route here, I mean here the right there.
Up wind on the westerly side of this high pressure cell, difficult decision.
3:50
We'll have a look, well if we decide to stay on the westerly side of it,
probably the easterly side it would go all the way over here as
this whole system drifts to the east, making it very difficult, but
here you can see the setting up point text, text, text and there very slow.
Meanwhile, these boats have reached the easterlies, and
they're full speed going due north towards the Equator.
I'll stop it here for a second.
You can see boats in the trade winds heading straight for the Equator.
The start here that works out the side of the high pressure.
They are still up winds, but they are getting very close to reach a nice place.
And then going towards the Equator.
These boats are in a small world of trouble.
Some low pressure system got generated along a cold front here.
And I out of wind and quite windy conditions, meanwhile the steel boat's
back here in the South Pacific trying to reach Cape Horn.
Let's go forward again.
4:55
Logical, it's being fed by cold air coming out of the Antarctic around Cape Horn and
warm and humid air coming down from Brazil.
Here you can see this is one of those lows we spoke about to go down into
the southern ocean and then basically go all the way around the world and
giving rise to the strong westerlies that the southern ocean is famous for.
Okay?
Anyway, it has moved out now which is normal.
They move quite quickly once they're formed,
but they're leaving a bit of a mess behind.
And you can see that on the tracks of the boats around it here.
There's no clearly defined system.
The wake of the low pressure's a bit of a void here.
And as the system slowly reestablishes itself with high pressure forming here,
high pressure over here, it is quite slow going for these boats at the moment.
All right. You can also
see here that this has happened.
Trades here sort of interrupted, as well.
These boats are having a fairly slow ride up.
These boats are not at the Equator, and almost reaching the northeastern trades.
Meanwhile, their are still boats back here.
Imagine this, these boats are in the tropics.
Rain squalls, showers on deck, shorts,
no t-shirt, trouble sleeping at night because it's so hot.
These parts are now still trying to reach Cape Horn.
There's one all the way back here.
Date is the 20th of March.
I mean 20th of March is sort of end of winter first of spring in the northern
hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it's the start of the autumn right.
You have to compare it with the 20th of September in the Northern hemisphere.
20th of September it's 56'30º, which is 56'30º is Cape Horn,
that equates to about south of Norway, Scotland, Canada, this
place is by them, starts the summer is definitely gone for a few weeks already.
6:47
Winter is making its first signs basically.
So, this is starting to get complicated for these guys.
Days are getting shorter, much less daylight, right, and
the conditions get harsher and harsher.
Meanwhile these guys are having trouble sleeping because of the heat.
You can see in the middle how complicated this has become for
this blue boat over here.
Tacking, not really sure where to go.
And compare that to the track that these first two boats did.
And straight to the Equator.
This is all because they were so smart.
They were in sync, synchronized with the weather.
The weather was just right when they got there.
They rode to where the water was worth.
Went around the high.
Reached the trades.
When these boats got here, low pressure was formed,
giving strong upwind conditions, leaving behind a wake with no clear system.
Trade winds, as you can see, south easterly trade winds are almost absent,
really weak because of the absence of a strong high.
And they've just been unlucky if you will by being late.
I mean they're unlucky now because they didn't do the right decisions
a month ago or two months ago, or coming out of right?
They are now reaping the benefits of being ahead basically.
Tomàs Molina
