rock steady said:
Yeah I'm keen to see if they have a "yacht tracker" system like they use in the Sydney to Hobart race - it's linked to GPS on the boats so you can literally watch them race across the ocean, checking their speed and heading.
They sure do.
http://www.volvooceanrace.org/virtualspectator/
They think Moviestar hit a growling surface container.... probably fallen from a cargo ship. Considering they were moving at around 25 knts when they hit there lucky the boat didn't go right to the bottom. The only thing impressive about Pirates, in my oppinion, is that Cayard is the skipper. Other than that it's a sailing bilboard.
Seems to me that in big breeze ABN-AMRO-1 has another gear.... for some reason there boat speed seems to be the same if not more than the wind speed. I wonder how thier measuring wind speed??... true or apparent?..I bet true. It'll be interesting when they reach the doldrums to see how much advantage the Ericsson boat has in the lighter conditions; as claimed. From the in-port racing the boat won handily picking up valuable points. If they can win all the in-ports and stay real close in the ocean legs I think they could pull it off.
All in all it's just warming up and proves to be a real battle. I know I'll be follwing very closely. I've already got my noaa weather site listings trying to read the patterns..

. Wait till they get into the southern ocean..... talk about hairy sailing.....
-K