Routing : from game to reality

On the second day of racing of this Vendée Globe 2020, we can say that the weather conditions that the skippers will experience on the descent towards the Doldrums will be particularly tough. After a departure in a damned weather, A first weak cold front passed without incident, The Solitaires will cross a second, much more violent front during the night and morning from Tuesday to Wednesday, for the group that went to the West, and in the evening for the group passed between the DST (¹) and Gallicia.

But these upcoming conditions are very different for Virtual Regatta players and For sailors…

Analysis satellite you 10 November 00h00 UTC by SailGrib

Which makes the big difference between the solitary and the players is due to the fact that Virtual Regatta does not take into account, nor the state of the sea, nor the currents. Which already explains in part to D+2 the gap between the group of players and that of the sailors.

The group of players (yellow circle) and that of the solitary (red circle) on D+2

Regarding routing, Even using the same GFS 1 ° weather models for the race and for the game, runners' performance is necessarily impacted by the state of the sea, surface currents due to wind, and to a lesser extent ocean currents. And this state of the sea will be particularly hard to negotiate in the coming hours (²).

State of the sea after passing the front, Météo France forecast for Wednesdays 11

This also explains that, to equivalent speed polar, assiduous players will always be able to stay at 100% Efficiency of the fleece integrated in Virtual Regatta, Without worrying about the waves that do not reach our screens. But he will certainly not go the same for browsers. On the one hand because they will have to leave the theoretical routing for many reasons : Matering the equipment, Minimize dangerous maneuvers such as big sea empaings, Optimize their trajectories, etc,, And on the other hand managing the race in the long term, which requires managing risk -taking.

With Weather4D in cruise navigation, We can adjust a wave height stress in a routing, For comfort and safety. In the race, It is the skipper who judges alone to cross or avoid, when he can, a dangerous sea zone.

After this first obstacle to overcome, another even more dangerous awaits them. To be continued…

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(¹) Dispositive of Swreck Trafic (Absolute exclusion zone for runners)
(²) See the detailed analysis of Yann Amice this Tuesday on the Ouest France page of Vendée Globe.
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