The Gamble Of Breaking Away Thursday, 10 April 2008
The gamble of breaking away.
First of all I want to reassure those of you familiar with Uniquely Singapore and our position that tends to be towards the back of the fleet, but which is not usually dead last.
We haven’t just become totally sick of beating into 25 knots of breeze (as unpleasant as that truly was) and decided to take a more favourable point of sail. Nor has the skipper completely lost it, although he did make us all hot drinks this morning. It’s all part of a cunning plan to take a gamble and choose a different route from the rest of the fleet in the hope that we will be able to make big gains on them later in the race.
To break away from the rest of the fleet is a big gamble because it relies on us trusting what the weather files are predicting to happen four or five days away and usually they are only accurate for about 48 hours. We also know that we’re going to lose out initially to the rest of the fleet, and that has happened. You have to have the courage of your convictions as you head off on your own and not change your mind before your new strategy has time to work. Otherwise you just risk consolidating your place at the back of the fleet.
So we’ve had a very enjoyable couple of days fine reaching at more than 10 knots. Right now we have the spinnaker up, which is not something any of us thought we’d see on this leg. It’s exciting to go and do our own thing and now we truly are Uniquely Singapore. We’ll have to see over the next couple of days whether this will all pay off, fingers crossed.
