Friday 13 November will not be a lucky day for the Vendée Globe skippers 2020 (¹). They will have to negotiate the encounter with tropical storm "Theta" which crosses their course with average winds that can reach the 40 nodes and powerful bursts. Above all, the sea will be to be feared because, strongly crossed as they passed the centre of the low pressure system, Waves may exceed 6 meters and break in a chaotic way.
Position of the competitors grouped the 12 November at 8:00 am UTC northeast of the Azores
Safety routing will certainly be essential because it is only the first days of the race, Especially for the " foilers "Who have not benefited from a long preparation. The following two projections on Friday 13 On the routing this morning made from the head of the fleet, should generally be followed by the majority of sailors :
Routing position on Friday 13. Weather gfs 12 November at 00h00 UTC
Routing position on Friday 13. Weather waves France 12 November 00H00 UTC
They should go to the west of the storm moving east to avoid the most difficult conditions. This reality which is essential on the water will not be perceived by the players of Virtual Regatta, whose trajectories can happily take advantage of the strong winds of the storm to increase their score (²).
Real race routing versus Virtual Regatta game
This is all the subtlety of routing, A very useful tool for the browser, but which must be analyzed and confronted with lived realities. A guide not to follow blindly. In the "race" routing above, a waves height constraint of 4 meters was introduced into the calculation. Which forces routing to largely bypass the center of the storm.
After this muscular episode, two or three days of respite before the black pot will allow sailors to decompress a little, and to " foilers »To make the powder speak ! As for the players, They will have little strategic option to make the difference.
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(¹) Météo Ouest-France – Vendée Globe 12/11/2020
(²) Météo Ouest-France – Vendée Globe – Virtual Regatta 12/11/2020
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VR still has this particular that the predicted weather is equal to that observed on water (short -term). Weather4D is very useful because its temporal horizon in GFS is much more distant than that offered in VR (Well played commercially Francis and Olivier)