Sunday, May 29th Update – Anderson Reggio – North Sails Expert

May 29, 2016

Fast and Furious

The lead 2 boats right now, Tales and Eärendil are just fast. Tales has shown speeds upwards of 19.6 knots. There are still some cells out there that are remnants from this tropical storm, but they are very much into the southerly breeze and whipping along. Most boats are seeing consistent speeds in the teens except the boats that are back, Dragon, Pleiad, Talanta. They are showing slower speeds, which is either a product of them potentially having broken something or they are just outside the latest set of cells that are going past the boats in front of them.

Strategy – Next 12 Hours

The next 12 hours, boats are going to be making their way around Cape Hatteras. It seems as though the winning strategy right now is staying in closer to shore where you’re getting a little bit better pressure and just sending it to the north. For Amhas and Toothface, the boats that are starting to push themselves offshore to find the Gulf Stream, the speed difference between is so great between them and Tales that I don’t really see the Gulf Stream, at least until they get past Hatteras, being that significant a factor.

What’s happening is that reports of pressure are stronger in and along the coast than they are offshore. Essentially the storm pushing in from offshore is doing more of a pressing against the shore, so along the shoreline you have 17-20 knots and offshore more in the 15-16 knot range. It’s hit or miss that’s the biggest thing about this, if you look at a satellite picture or radar image you’ll see banding activity in the showers which means it’s probably a banding activity in the cloud formation the teams are seeing as well so they’re basically hopping from one cell to the next. On the leading edge they get a big outflow of pressure, underneath them they get a big softening of pressure and then behind them it can be quite light and variable for a little while until the gradient starts to fill back in.

Looking ahead, it’s definitely a no lead is safe scenario because after they get around Hatteras then the Gulf Stream is definitely going to be a priority. and they’ll be around Hatteras in the next few hours, and then the gulf stream is going to be much more of a priority especially because it will get significantly lighter as they get further north during the day on Monday and even into early Tuesday.

No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn

The models, as far as how to set yourself up on how to come into the finish are a bit variable so if I were on board right now I wouldn’t be planning my entrance into New York, because it’s just not clear yet. I expect the leaders to hedge their bets a bit after they get around Hatteras to push offshore to get more into the stream to put themselves more between the competition and the goal post. I’d expect Toothface and Amhas to want to be the furthest east east and hit the gulf stream first. Oakcliff’s strategy isn’t quite clear yet they seem to have gone east for a while and now seem to be taking a more northerly route and for the last three they seem to be unfortunately shot out the back pretty quickly.