Spotlights and Leverage

“Hello, boat with the spotlight following us. This is the Volvo Ocean Race raceboat Delta Lloyd. It’s a great night to be out sailing, isn’t it?”

Thus the first of our escorts in the Atlantic . . .

Leaving the Strait of Gibraltar we put up our largest downwind spinnaker and headed south along the coast of Morocco. Due to the angle of the wind we could sail for only about an hour before we had to gybe and head in a more westerly direction. Just after the gybe, a black stealth boat, with no lights at all, came out of nowhere, set up close alongside, and lit us up with a massive spot light.

The guys on deck were a bit startled, as you might expect. They called me up from the nav station, and right away I knew it was the Moroccan navy.

Morocco maintains an exclusion zone on their northwest coast. During our Navigator’s Briefing before the start, Volvo Race Management warned us about the possibility of ‘harassment.’ The discussion during our briefing included polling the teams to perhaps make this region a restricted mark of the course. The vote was no, and since this region was not restricted I had decided to take a chance. Crossing through a corner of the zone saved about four miles of sailing distance, but yes we were taking a chance. This chance.

So there we were, sailing along at a nice pace in the middle of the night, blinded by spotlights and scared now that we might be stopped for a search. Finally, over a loudspeaker we heard a word in some other language.

The command was repeated.

And repeated.

“They told us to stop,” one of our guys aid. My retort was, “Stop? How do we stop? Besides, we can’t understand what they are asking us to do. Stay on target speed and true wind angle. I’m getting on the radio.”

I ran below, grabbed our handheld and came back on deck. Over Channel 16 I said, in an effort to shower them with kindness, “Hello, boat with the light that is following us. This is the Volvo Ocean Race raceboat Delta Lloyd. It’s a great night to be out sailing, isn’t it?”

Their reply: They turned their spot light to strobe mode.

“Great, we're going to jail," one of our guys joked. "This is not how I expected leg one to turn out.” I’m not even sure who said it. We were blinded by the light, all of us. After some nervous laughter all around, another guy said, “We’re not stopping; keep going.” We sailed on, with the stealth boat just 15 meters away. Add five minutes of stress and the stealth boat suddenly switched off all lights and vanished as quickly as it had come.

Escort Two: We started our day surrounded by about 50 dolphins. If having one dolphin swim along with a boat is considered good luck to sailors, then our luck was spilling over. I went down to the nav station, touched the teak strip along the edge of my nav desk—to add to the string of superstitions—and got to work. As it turned out, we had a very good day! We have been playing the shifts and we've managed to leverage ourselves to leeward of the lead pack. In addition to gaining that strategic leverage (we hope to cash it in over the next 48 hours), we have, in general, been sailing in more wind than the competition.

By gybing on a couple of shifts, and by staying in better wind, we have gained all day long.

Thank you dolphin-friends. I hope we’ll have breakfast together again tomorrow. Until then, touch wood.

And as for readers: At bottom you will find a screen shot from my computer. It shows a high pressure ridge (the blue rings) building to the northwest of us. This will dominate the weather scenario and send us southwest in northerly winds until we reach the easterly trade winds to the south of the screen shot.

Matt Gregory from the nav station of Delta Lloyd