For the last blog we decided to share a little or what little knowledge I know about clouds. Sounds fascinating you may say but just hear me out. I’ll talk you through a passage of depression. These normally form when you have a barrier of cold air from the polar next to warm air from the tropics meeting.
Stage 1: Warm front. Pressure falls. Start with cirrus clouds which are very high in the sky and wispy. Followed by cirro stratus, which are also high level but slightly more formed. Then follows altro stratus where clouds start to become slightly more dense and darker. The rain then begins to form.
Stage 2: Warm front passes pressure steadies. You start to get nimbostratus which kinda look like small mushroom cloud. This is followed by stratus, which kinda looks like you stretched a cloud out with wispy ends.
Stage 3: Pressure starts to rise. You can get cumulonimbus which are big mushrooms clouds going from low altitude to high altitude. This followed by cumulus clouds which are puffy clouds with squalls and rain.
So why do this all matter? Well, James and I and the Watch Leader spend about three hours a day talking about clouds. Because at the end of the day, when you go out on deck and look up what is in the book it doesn’t accumulate what is in the sky. Our elaborate description of clouds is now is a scary cloud? Is that windless cloud? Or windy cloud? Do you think we should get the spinnaker down for that one? Maybe there is rain in that cloud? Because here in the tropics, you really have no idea what is coming. Lots of windy squally conditions or no wind and sitting still. The clouds look very similar.
As you may have seen on the Race Viewer in the last couple weeks, it could be as close as a mile in how much wind you get, going from 2 miles apart to 20 miles. It really is potluck around this part of the world. I would say we have got better at cloud dodging and decided that if we have wind it’s better to sail away from the clouds no matter how big or small. There’s a 50/50 chance that it’s either going to help or hinder your progress. Seems most of the time this race it’s the latter. Seems most clouds have a big wind shift normally in the wrong direction too. We have, however, learnt one thing so far, well hopefully more than that. But as long as the sky looks the same that’s the best as the conditions are the most stable.
Overall, the last couple days we have had very little clouds, which showed slow but steady progress in the right direction. It has very much been great sailing although soaking at 130 is never fun and both James and I have had our moment of getting little bit fed up and decide to do like 110 for couple of hours to reduce the stress. However, everything else has been great. The music is out, the sun is out, it’s a great temperature below and above deck. Little to complain about really.
We are still fighting for third and it is very hard to say at this moment. We aren’t only fighting Perseverance but also PSP Logistics who although is 100 miles away but with added time only an hour or so now. But with some wind holes and some more downwind sailing, it could be anyone still. Only time will tell.
COYS
Mike and James and Zhuhai.