Sail with New Freebooters

Unfortunately, I had to leave Capetown just as Telefonica stormed in to win the first leg of the  2011 Volvo. A typical showery blow had set in, with Table Mountain wearing a dark, heavy duvet (down comforter) rather than a light tablecloth of cloud. Just before sunset, this cleared away to provide a lucky photographer with a view of the heavily-reefed Telefonica storming along against a backdrop of Capetown lights and a silhouette of the Mountain.

In what was intended to be a quick preview, I visited the Waterfront a couple of days ahead of her arrival. Members of the competing teams were easy to recognize by their shirts, and I followed a Groupama man who was using a scooter (the ones you push yourself, not the successor to my 1960s Lambretta) to get around, ending up by chatting to a few other team members in their wharfside HQ.

The Waterfront is quite a large place, and competitors’ bases were distributed around the wharves, so I didn’t have time to  visit any others, I did, however, take a quick look at  the race organisers’ show, which included a cinema showing a 3D film, and one of those flight simulator capsules on hydraulic rams which had been set up to simulate riding in a Volvo 70 in a rough sea. I didn’t hang around long enough to see the green faces of the folks who were ‘enjoying’ the experience. I wonder whether they were also pumping realistic noise levels into the capsule…

I’m now crossing my fingers, hoping that both Groupama and Puma will be fit and ready for the In Port race. This has been a really tough beginning, and I heard that the race organisers were even looking at the possibility of postponing by a day or two.

The Charente Maritime/Bahia Transat 6.5 (Mini-Transat to most of us) kicked off one man short when Jean-Marc Allaire drowned after falling overboard in quite light winds in the heavy swell off Cap-Ferret. All the skippers survived the race itself, but there was a lot of damage – two boats lost, dismastings, boats on the beach, countless rudders broken or damaged, medical emergencies.

The Transat Jacques Vabre has had some hairy weather, too. 64 knot gusts. Concise has advised the race committee that they’re heading for the Azores because they’ve suffered hull delaminations.

After a peaceful in-port race, the first ocean leg of the Volvo took off into the teeth of a front which broke two of the six boats competing in this year’s race.

China’s Sanya team has retired from the first leg with severe hull damage. Their target is to mend the hull and ship it to Capetown in time for the in-port race.

Abu Dhabi is in better shape. She motored home with her mast in 3 pieces, but hopes that re-starting with her spare mast about 3 days late won’t be a total disaster. She can’t be unhappy to see the four unharmed boats scattering all over the ocean trying to decide where the wind will come from.

I’m in Paris Charles de Gaulle airport waiting for a flight to Johannesburg. I’ll be in Capetown from about 22 Nov, by which time some of the Volvo boats should have arrived – if they don’t spend too long in the doldrums. I should also be able to catch the Global Ocean race fleet before they take off on their next leg.

In my younger days, if you were stuck in harbour on a boat – or at home with nothing but ball games and quizzes on the TV – there were only a few options. You could read a book or get on with a craft or a hobby – or you could play cards or a board game, but that meant persuading several of the people around you to join in.

Nowadays, even boats can be hooked in to the Internet while they’re in harbour, and there can be several web-enabled devices on board. Apart from the boat having its own equipment, there’s a good chance several of the crew are carrying smartphones.

That means the teenagers in the forepeak can chat to their friends on Facebook, while the older folk can each choose to whether  swap yarns and plan voyages, or to pursue activities online – and they can decide whether or not they each want to do the same thing.

Online gaming allows anything from two to several thousand players to compete against one another in activities ranging in complexity from chess and card games to the hectic, Walter Mitty experiences of Virtual Reality environments such as Second Life. My favourite, sailonline.org, is a real time simulator of the navigator’s job in an ocean race, using real polar diagrams to model the boat’s performance and live grib files to model current and predicted weather patterns. However, that’s like a real navigator’s job – short periods of activity spaced right around the clock. What we’re discussing here is something to while away the odd half hour or so, like playing in an internet casino.  Nowadays, you can do that on your own, playing with anyone in the world who is awake at the time. Even if you’re not new to online gambling, it is wise to do it through a site that displays the eCogra seal. Apart from providing links to sites which it has reviewed and rated, this site provides plenty of guidance for both newbies and intermediate players.

I suppose poker is the serious gambler’s game, but the most popular is a game I learned as a kid under the name pontoon, which is derived from the French game vingt-et-un and a similar Spanish game, both dating back at least as far as the 16th century. Casinos use the American name blackjack.

Heed this warning, though:

- if you get addicted easily (e.g. you can’t stay away from bingo halls and betting shops) DON’T EVEN PLAY THE FREE GAMES. I quite happily use these
because I have no trouble walking away afterwards, like I do from all the Internet Marketing teasers.