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Together with Guigui,
we’re going to carry out a current measuring mission
because in Lisbon,
the In-Port is taking place on the Tagus River,
which has the appeal of tides,
with the accompanying periods of high tide
and low tide of course,
with 6 hours between each tide.
On Saturday we’ll be racing at low tide.
We’re exiting the port
and the start zone will be just beyond
the extension of the sea wall there,
a little bit offshore,
and we’re going to take current measurements
by traversing the Tagus at points around 400m apart,
along an axis which runs across the river.
Okay, I’m setting the time at 10h35
The method for measuring the current
involves a long rod of around 3m,
which is weighed down at the end and
stands vertically in the water,
and at the point where we let it go,
we press the Man Overboard button.
This translates as a point,
which you have to return to recover the person or thing.
When you return to recover the stick,
which is still in the water,
after say 3 minutes,
it has drifted with the tide and
then you note that we were at a distance of 70m in 3 minutes
and that equates to about 2/3 of a knot.
That’s not bad.
Right now we’re at low tide so
we could have up to 3 knots of current here.
When the tide turns you can very easily see 1 knot of current
in one direction and 1 knot of current in the other direction
on each side of the river.
You need to know about that kind of thing because
you need to make the most of it.
1 knot is massive!
That could make a difference of 2 knots on either side.
Conditions were good and
we latched onto some wind of up to 25 knots off Cascais
with sunshine thrown in, which was great for sailing.
The aim wasn’t to train or go through the manoeuvres
but instead to test the gear,
like the sails,
and we have a short jobs list with a few things
that need modifying on the sails.
We’ve already made some changes and
we’ll continue with that this week.
It has been interesting and
things are heading the right way in terms of performance
and we’re making some good modifications with time.
There are a few things that need amending obviously,
things which are suffering wear and tear in particular.
We need to work on getting the ideal shape out of the sails
as they’re beginning to deform because of their age.
Like all the other teams,
if we want to remain at the top level,
you often have to touch up the sails and
that’s one of the most important elements in our performance.
We don’t tackle every leg in the same way.
Those coming up are more like sprints so
we have to equip ourselves accordingly,
with notably fewer comfort elements aboard the boat
in a bid to make it as light as possible.
The equipment and the sails have to be selected according to the weather forecast,
as the forecasts can now take us right up
to the end of the leg given how short they are now.
This means we can really have some very specific sails
according to the forecast.
For now we don’t know what the forecast is as it’s still early on in the week,
but we’re ready to respond to whatever conditions
we’re due to face and hence all the possible sail configurations aboard.