A note from the shorecrew;

As you all noticed the yellow boat did not join the rest of the ARC fleet for the start on Sunday 26th of November. When they finally got going, two days and some hours behind, it wasn’t exactly in the way they had hoped… After a few hours of sailing, the Creightons got stuck in a wind hole between some canary islands, staying practically still for the rest of that day.
While most other boats headed towards the steady easterly trade winds in the south, the crew of Creightons instead decided to go north as soon as possible, having everything to win!
The reason, trying to catch some tempting leftovers from an old low pressure which should get the 80 footer flying, and of course passing the rest of the ARC fleet. With the aid of a weather routing programme, we found the optimal route from the Canaries to Saint Lucia (figure below).
Today, December 3rd, we see on the ARC-web page that Creightons is positioned right at the northernmost tip of the proposed optimal route (black curve in the fig.), so it seems like they have stuck to the plan. The boat is sailing in some good breeze at this time so hopefully they will gain some on the fleet.

The figure shows an optimal route for Creightons, presented by a weather routing programme. The red curve is the closest route from Gran Canaria to Saint Lucia. The black curve is the winning course that Creightons will try to sail.


Cheers!
/ Erik Nordborg, Creightons´ shorebased meteorologist.