From Pip Hare (Medallia) on weather
IMOCA, Pip Hare, Medallia: “The weather over the next few days looks quite tricky, I am scratching my head looking at it right now. We are heading to the Azores making the most of the pressure squeeze down the outside of the high pressure that is to the east of us. We will be in this for another 18 hours or so. And then after that we need to negotiate a little blob of high pressure with some light downwind for six hours or so. And then after that the main feature is two low pressures. So our course is really zig-zagging either side of the rhumb line and using first a little low pressure on Monday and then a ‘Big Daddy’ low pressure which comes in on Wednesday which should slingshot our way down towards Martinique. For me it is going to be finding the balance between leveraging both of these systems but minimising risk in terms of seastate, so we will go in and come out again in the classic seagull wing shape. And it is all about when we go in, how far do we go in and when we come out and at the moment the GFS and European models don’t agree where the centre is. But they both agree on the shape and so my job is to keep looking at the weather reports and get us down the rhumb line, working out where the centre of the second low is. But it will be back to the big lumpy sea states and up to 30kts of wind and for us, strategically, it is good option as we are still pretty compromised with the two reefs in the main. I am little bit nervous, but lets see how it goes.”