Jonny Malbon

More encouraging Christmas wishes from the Lizards in NYC!

The children in Molly’s class at Packer in Brooklyn have been producing yet more stunningly good works of art, under the guidance of their teachers, Rains Paden and Andrea Snyder (to whom we owe many thanks . . . clearing up the glitter alone must have been a monumental task).

Not content with just producing holiday wishes for “Uncle” Jonny, they have posed him some questions which they’re hoping he’ll have time to answer between the hurricane force winds he has been facing, and all the other things he has been up to on the boat.

Notable that Jonny appears to have developed a particularly devoted following amongst the young ladies in Molly’s class, although we don’t think Blandine has anything to worry about for a few years, at least.

Stick in there Jonny!! Merry Christmas and a Happy (& less windy) New Year from the Lizards of Packer.

Erin Roddy, Jacob Kadir, & Ethan Friedman, with their card and questions

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Day 39 - Disaster for Yann Elies in GENERALI

This morning (Thursday), as he was working on the bow of Generali, Yann Eliès was was thrown along the deck and sustained a fracture to his thighbone. While he waits to be evacutated from his boat, following a request from the race directors,  Marc Guillemot has changed course to help offer the injured skipper psychological support.  Guillemot’s Safran less than one hundred miles from Generali at the time and is expected to there in six or seven hours time.

Elies was working at the bow, leaning on the pulpit, as he was preparing a sail, when his 60-foot boat, Generali, came to a sudden halt slamming into a wave. The sailor felt a sudden acute pain. He collapsed on the foredeck and had to crawl back inside his boat to contact his team. According to the initial diagnosis from Dr. Jean-Yves Chauve, the race doctor, Yann is suffering from a broken femur (thighbone). 

 The monohull, Generali, lying hove to, is currently 800 miles south of Australia in the Indian Ocean. The Australian emergency services were immediately alerted and are looking at ways to get Yann off as quickly as possible.

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Day 39 - Hard times for the Fleet

The solo sailors are having to deal with another nasty low-pressure area. Arnaud Boissières (Akena Vérandas) admitted today that he was sailing with three reefs in the mainsail, while Sam Davies confirmed she had never seen seas like it before. As for Brian Thompson (Bahrain Team Pindar), he had recorded  gusts in excess of 55 knots, and is continually on stand by due to intermittent problems with his auto-pilots.

Jonny Malbon (Artemis II) has watermaker problems again, but sounds immeasurably more confident having been through storms up to 60 knots of wind:

“I was just left hanging on and watching the wind speeds at the nav station.” Malbon said.

All of the sailors are facing heavy cross seas, creating uncomfortable sailing conditions. With howling winds and whistling keels in the background, the tired, frail voices on today’s radio session were clearly not in the mood for light-hearted conversation.  While at the front of the fleet, the war of nerves continues, others appear to have adopted a less ambitious strategy, at least on the surface.  Davies said today that she and Thompson have discussed their shared desire to simply finish.

For some this is down to the damage they have suffered, while for others it is quite simply the realisation that their boats could not satisfy their ambitions. Some were merely pleased to see they were still in the race and if we look at the number of competitors that have been forced to retire in the past week, we can reflect their satisfaction.

Sam takes a tumble

“I hurt myself last night, during the manoeuvres through the front. Am rather sore today, as a result. I was stacking everything, ready for my gybe, and at the time I was stacking a spinnaker in the aft section, under the cockpit. Unfortunately, as I was pulling on it, a sail-tie broke, and I went flying backwards, landing my elbow into a winch transmission box - a nice solid corner. It hurt SO much that everything went black, and I passed out! I woke up lying on my back, under the cockpit. The elbow was throbbing, from my fingertips to my shoulder. I could move it thankfully, but the pain made me sick. Because of these reactions, I called Jean-Yves Chauve, the race doctor, and he told me which (nice strong) painkiller to take.  The problem was - I had to gybe! I lay down for as long as possible (for the painkiller to work), and summoned my strength. I managed the gybe! Luckily the wind had dropped in the cold front but I had kept small sails, so the manoeuvre was easy.  Since then, Jean-Yves has helped me check the elbow by telephone to confirm that it is just a nasty big bruise, nothing more serious. My elbow is so SORE, but I know it will get better, so there is no worry. He said that the reason for my rather severe reaction to the shock is probably because I’m not eating enough - and I must try harder to balance the energy I use each day with enough nutrition. I need 6000 calories per day out here in the cold south. The annoying thing now is that eating is a movement that really hurts my arm - ironically! So, I will maybe try eating left-handed, although that is a sure way to ensure that I will be mostly “wearing” my dinner rather than  consuming it - especially in this sea-state! I can already hear you asking - YES - the winch transmission box is fine I didn’t do it any damage!”

Sam Davies (Roxy) in her daily message to Vendee Race HQ

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DAY 39 - Jonny passes the Kerguelen Islands

Jonny past the Kerguelens

“Just to let you know that I passed the longitude of the Kerguelens at approx 0400 UTC. I was wall to the north and I have to say I am very happy to finally have cleared the islands.  It seems like I have been looking at them for a very very long time!  At least now I can move on to the east and towards home. We had a great nights sailing, fast with good waves for the first time.  The breeze has increased to 30 knots this morning, but the sea is still behaving and we are making some good progress.  Spent most of yesterday fixing the watermakers again – I was down to 3 litres, so things were desperate.  I have now made about 15 litres and adapted the water feed.  They seem to be working much better now, so fingers crossed. Onwards now to the next ice gate, and Christmas under Australia!!”

Jonny Malbon (Artemis II) in his daily message

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Jonny: “I was just left hanging on and watching the wind speeds”

This radio interview excerpt from the official Vendee Globe website:

Image from the official Vendee Globe website. © Jacques Vapillon / DPPI

Jonny Malbon, GBR, (Artemis II): “The second big depression came through and after the first one had come through with a lot more wind than the GRIB (weather) files I got pretty well prepared for it. And so a couple of hours before it hit I had pretty much got everything set up with the reefs in and the storm jib set up and ready to go. And it did not fail to deliver within about an hour and a half it was 40, then 50 and then gusting 60. It was certainly over 50 and 55 for about 12 hours. And it was pretty windy, but the sea state was just much, much worse than the first one.

I have a lot of confidence in the boat now. It has done me proud. At one point we hit 30 knots and I was locked in downstairs. The boat was underwater up to windows on the coachroof. She has done us proud. I did a bit of maintenance yesterday when the wind was down a bit. I put in a new mainsheet and tightened up the battencars and generally gave her a bit of love.”

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Mike Golding video

Shortly after securing the boat, Mike Golding recorded this video that we found on YouTube. It really brings home the disappointment. It’s a shocker after he’d gone from 7th to 1st.

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Life in the Roaring Forties

The boating blog ‘Messing About In Sailboats‘ is rammed with interesting nauticalia, and we found this post reporting from Derek Hatfield on Algimouss-Spirit of Canada. As the post says, it pretty much sums up what it’s like day after day in the Roaring Forties and what it takes to participate.

There are some other gems - including a recent post on stupid boat names: a long list of unbelievably stupid boat names, including:

I am not making this up
There was a yacht at the Arun Yacht Club called “Passing Wind.” About 10 miles to the west is the Looe Passage, around SDelsey Bill, West Sussex. A crew member was hit by the boom,and the owner called out the coastguard. “What is your name and position?” “We are Passing Wind, in the Looe”

I’ve added the blog to our blogroll.

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Phone call + Podcast = Gabcast

Skipper of Great American III, Rich Wilson is using the online service Gabcast to make calls that are instantly turned into podcasts. I thought we were doing well with Jonny’s Twitterstream, and no doubt Twitter has its place - its been very cool to watch Jonny’s followers grow to a little community of around 145 people. What Gabcast gives you is much more intimate - you get to hear him - and obviously not limited 140 characters of text. And you can subscribe, which means you can use iTunes to automatically update with the latest installment so that you can load it onto your iPod and listen to it when you’re doing something else.

I love Rich’s gabcasts. The latest involves him talking about the second big low pressure system that he and Jonny have both sailed through in the past few days. He talks about the barometer dropping at 45 degrees - something he’s never seen before (and nor have most of us!) and he tell you all this in a way that really transports you into his world more powerfully than text on a web page. There are little details - details that can only really come through speech - that paint pictures of his experiences, like the hundreds of sea-birds that gathered around his boat after the storm.

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Christmas Wishes for Jonny from The Lizards!

Molly, Jonny’s niece who lives in Brooklyn, NY, and her classmates at Packer spent some time this week crafting some holiday wishes for Jonny in the shape of a card. Jonny, these are a collection of images that Ms Snyder, one of Molly’s teachers, took during what looks like an intensely creative session! looks like they have the wave height about right.

Happy holidays (as they say over here) & Happy Christmas (as Molly says to you). Stick in there.

From a snowy New York, Good Luck Jonny! xx

The class have kept the card and will give it to you when you come in and tell them about your adventures.

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A really useful piece by Chris Tibbs, professional meteorologist, from the ARTEMIS Site

With the Southern Ocean depressions taking their toll on yachts and skippers there are a number of difficult decisions for Jonny to make. One he has made is to pass to the north of the Kerguelen Islands. 

Why is south such an advantage? 

When we see maps of the world on a flat piece of paper there seems little point in going in anything but a straight line, however when we look on a globe, we can see that when we get to the south the lines of longitude converge on the South Pole. So the further south we are the shorter the distance between each degree of longitude; if we take this to its natural conclusion by getting to the South Pole we can walk around the world in seconds. To give an idea; at the equator each degree of longitude is 60 nautical miles (nm) 

At 45°S it is 42.6nm.  At 50S it is 38.7nm.  At 55S it is 34.5nm 

So massive gains can be made by being to the south however there are a number of reasons why the skippers do not take themselves as far south as the gates and rules allow. 

The gates are included to keep the competitors away from the icebergs of the southern ocean and to also keep the competitors reasonably close to Australia, after a number of high profile southern ocean rescues that stretched the authority’s resources. In the case of icebergs this is not always successful as we have seen from the dramatic photos Jonny sent back. If he has not enough on his plate the presence of icebergs adds greatly to anxiety levels. Large ones are spotted by satellite but it is the small ones that are the worry. They vary in size from a small island to the size of a house or car and whilst statistically there is little chance of hitting one, it is like playing Russian roulette. Radar will pick up the larger bergs but the small ones in a big sea are more difficult to spot. 

The main reason why Jonny and his fellow competitors do not go as far south as allowed is primarily the weather. Looking at averages we see that the roaring 40’s and screaming 50’s should be a never ending strong westerly wind. Reality is however far from this as depressions rush from west to east within this flow of wind, turning the wind at first to the N-NW then to the SW as they pass. 

To the north is the Indian Ocean area of high pressure and to the south the tracks of depressions, these are usually to be found at around 60S. These are very like the depressions that come across the Atlantic and hit northern Europe except that in the southern hemisphere the wind around the lows spins in the opposite direction – that is clockwise. The strong westerly wind (SW-NW) that is so useful for Jonny, is therefore found to the north of the low, between the high and low pressure. To the south of the low are easterly winds. 

However, unlike the North Atlantic there is no land for the lows to hit and to dissipate their energy, so the lows travel further and slowly decline naturally as they go. In addition, as they decline they tend to head a little more to the south and out of harms way. 

They will however often spawn new or secondary lows, and these will be a found a few hundred miles to the north of the declining low. It is these new lows tracking further north that it is crucial for Jonny to watch for. They will bring new winds, and as the lows when they start are tighter, the wind swings more violently. But, and it is a very big but; it is imperative that the low passes to the south of Jonny. 

This is the situation that Jonny has been in – a deep low has passed to the south of the Kerguelen Islands and a smaller low has been barrelling towards him. This made it necessary for him to take a hit by heading north to make sure the low passed to the south. This it has so Jonny avoided gale force head winds. It was close but he did it! 

It has also made the decision of passing north, or south, of the Kerguelen Islands by default as strong southerly winds behind the low will prevent Jonny getting far enough to the south to pass south of them. Once this low continues east out of the way, the Indian Ocean high will extend to the south making it a little easier for the next few days (after the strong southerly winds). 

The Kerguelen Islands are a remote outpost which along with Cape Horn has the distinction of producing the roughest seas on the Planet. The waters are relatively shallow and the southern ocean current runs strongly over the plateau. This current brings colder waters north (along with icebergs) and the whole area is a place where depressions are created and deepen. As Jonny passes to the north the wind should ease and although the seas will be rough and confused, not quite as bad as they could be. In terms of miles, it is a little further to travel but if he had got on the south side of the low pressure, life would have been 10 times worse. 

Follow Jonny and Artemis Ocean Racing II in their quest around the Globe by logging on to www.artemisoceanracing.com

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