B2K – an Armchair Admiral’s report, 1030 Saturday

It must have been terribly frustrating for the B2K fleet as they crawled out of Moreton Bay yesterday.  Weather observations from Cape Moreton, from the scheduled start time of 1105 onwards tell the story, with winds of 4-5kts.  It wasn’t until after 1900 that a decent sailing breeze of 12kts from the NNE arrived:

The screen shot below picks up the bulk of the fleet at Sat 1030, together with the three ‘model’ vessels, a TP52, a Farr 40 and a Beneteau First 40 – all shown in black.  The positions of the model vessels are derived using polars from Expedition’s built in library of standard boat designs and the GFS weather models available just before the start.

The leaders – Black Jack and Wild Oats are out of the picture to the north, past Breaksea Spit, and both travelling at 9.5 kts in light north westerlies, about one mile apart.

Alive is about 20nm behind, also out of the picture, sailing at 8.5kts

There is no weather observation point at the north of Fraser Island, but Double Island Point, just south of Fraser Island is currently reporting 8-10kts from NNW.

The bulk fleet is at the halfway point, nearing Indian Head on Fraser Island, and it is worthwhile to look at how the competitors are faring compared with the predictions made by Expedition’s routing software.

The two TP52s –Envy Scooters and Gweilo have passed Indian Head and heading towards Breaksea Spit and are about 17nm ahead of the model TP52.

Crankster – a Farr 40 is also a few miles ahead of the model Farr 40 while Mayfair – a Beneteau First 40 is just a few miles behind its model.

This doesn’t prove much other than the fleet must be experiencing weather reasonably close to what the GFS model predicted, and the boats are sailing reasonably close to the polars provided in the Expedition software. 

Nevertheless, it indicates that if all this continues, most entrants can expect a pineapple from Commodore Mark before sunset tomorrow!