The next leg of the VORG is a short one, to Boston and after that we cross the Atlantic again, on our way to Ireland.

In the previous Volvo Ocean Race that leg turned out to be disastrous for the ABN AMRO 2, when Hans Horrevoets, a Dutch sailor, washed overboard and drowned.

Hopefully this edition of the Volvo Ocean Race can stay without such disasters!

With Blanquilla I am sailing the race “as I should” in Eastern direction, whereas with otherway I have taken “the other way” sailing around the world in Western direction.

The two boats were therefore bound to “meet” each other somewhere in the vast ocean. Today that happened and we were actually there to report it.

See the screen shots below:

[singlepic id=412 w=320 h=240 float=center]

[singlepic id=413 w=320 h=240 float=center]

[singlepic=240,320,240,,center]

[singlepic=239,320,240,,center]

Whereas my other boat Blanquilla that sails the race in the “correct” direction constantly has the wind in the back, this route is proving to be a constant challenge!

In the Volvo Ocean Race Game we have just started leg 3, Cochin, India to Singapore. It is a very short leg, but going through the tiny Strait of Malacca will probably turn out to be tough!

The total time it took me was 31 days, 20 hours and 45 minutes and I reached position 7,426 of a total number of participants of more than 55,000.
[singlepic=128,320,240,,center]

I had a nice bottle of champagne and after a long hot shower I can now start mentally preparing myself for leg 2 to Cochin, India. The start of leg 2 is next week Saturday, November 15.

From the Volvo Ocean Race Game website:

Sun 09 Nov 2008
We were tens of thousands rushing behind our computer screens today trying to take the best option over other competitors.
A veritable tornado hit our servers which went immediately into ‘Stealth’ mode.
More seriously, rest assured that to preserve the fairness of the game during this unfortunate blackout, the race has been put on ‘pause’. Racing will resume once the service has been restored online.
Our team apologies for this failure and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that the weather forecast become favorable as soon as possible
Thank you for your patience and fair wind to all!
Sebastien Destremau

Since around 4pm on Sunday the Volvo Ocean Race Game has come to a standstill. The servers on which they run the virtual sailing game have collapsed under the pressure. The smart-asses who developed the game are hosting another virtual sailing game, the Vendée Globe Virtual Race that started today from Les Sables d’Olonne, on the same servers.

The Vendée Globe Race is a round-the-world sailing regatta, without stopovers or assistance for monohulls.

That is more than 80,000 virtual sailors for 2 games with numerous variables that need updating every 10 minutes on 1 server. That is bound to go wrong, which happened today.

A lot of people are unhappy as they have been spending the last 24 days checking their positions on a very regular basis (that means a couple of times per day) and are getting very close to the finish of the first leg in Cape Town, now unable to make course adjustments or anything!

What I don’t really understand is how Volvo, a brand known for it’s safe and robust cars, can and wants to be associated with the developers of this virtual sailing game.

From the Volvo Ocean Race website: …Volvo‚Äö√Ñ√¥s three core values ‚Äö√Ñ√¨ Quality, Safety and Environmental Care…

Here we go, one of Volvo’s core values is Quality, yup with a capital Q.

Well after all the problems with the game, server downtime, non-communication, bad design, “Quality” is not a word that quickly comes to mind!

Shortly after my update the strong winds made place for an almost complete lack of of them and I had to make the decision to go south or take a route to Cape Town further to the north.

Well for that decision – I chose the latter, speed over latitude – I am paying a high price as it turns out that I cannot sail directly southeast anymore now, unless I want to sail at around 5 knots.

With the current speed of around 13 knots it will take me another 47 hours to arrive at Cape Town, but I will not be able to keep that speed due to wind speed changes and I cannot sail in a direct line. Below I have added some screenshots of the wind forecast for the coming 36 hours. The arrows show the wind force and the direction.

Next week, On November 15, the second leg from Cape Town to Cochin, India already starts. By that time I will have arrived and therefore be ready for the start, just wondering about what will happen to the more than 45,000 boats that are still coming in behind me. And starting with 53,000 boats at the same time from Cape Town which is known for hardly any wind in the Table Bay is going to be very interesting too!

A big part of the website is designed in Flash, therefore hardly any SEO possibilities and much of the rest of the site is put together with – I hardly dare to say it – tables. Oh my!

Over the weeks lots of “stuff” has been added to the site, without any communication towards the virtual sailors; we’ll just have to check back and find out for ourselves.
There is a forum with help desk and many members use it to ask information on a wide range of topics, however none of those are answered.
On the news section you can read emails of other members, hardly news if you ask me. And the event page shows the schedule of the upcoming legs, without the actual starting times. Why not call it schedule then?

Anyways, through my Woopra stats I discovered that typing a number of keywords in Google turns up the following result:
[singlepic=123,320,240,,center]

That’s right, type the keywords ‘volvo ocean race game wind forecast change’ in Google.com and Piet Bos dot ME shows up first! [Nov. 8 update]Not anymore, it seems that someone has realized it and tweaked some here and there. Ah well, 2nd in the results now.

Well, that’s a feather in my arse! pulled it out again…

In my opinion the website of the Volvo Ocean Race Game should have been built on an entirely different platform, enabling much more interactivity with the now more than 50,000(!) virtual sailors.

In the Volvo Ocean Race Game, the leader is getting close to the finish line with only 382 nm to go. There are now more than 48,000 virtual boats participating in the game and I am happy that I finally made it back into the first 9,000. At the time of writing my position is 8,710.

After I left the Doldrums, crossed the equator and rounded the buoy at Ilha de Fernando de Noronha, which is an official scoring gate that cannot be missed, I arrived in strong winds that took me south and east in the fast lane! On the screenshot below you can see the distance I covered in the past 48 hours.

[singlepic=122,320,240,,center]

Last night I crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and with a bit of luck I can stay in the current depression taking me further to the southeast, leading eventually to Cape Town, where I hope to arrive within the next 5 days orso.

After getting new ciggies I went to the park to sit on the terrace in the sun for a bit. I ordered a large strong coffee, “caf‚àö¬© Americano”, and a bocadillo with pork, cheese and red pepper, “bocadillo con lomo y queso”.

The bocadillo is one of the most popular type of breads in Spain. It’s not a sandwich, because that uses a soft bread and the bocadillo is made with half a French bread.

Translated from Wikipedia: Usually a bocadillo is made up of half white loaf of bread (French bread) cut crosswise roughly with a length of 24 cm and with the ingredients between the two halves of the bread. You can differentiate between ‘cold bocadillos’ and’ hot bocadillos’ depending on the temperature of the contents to use.

When I came back home I met my vecino (neighbor) Kevin in the elevator. Kevin has come to my place for a few times to learn some Chinese and he lend me a small TV over the weekend, so I can watch some TV if I want to. I downloaded some movies (Death Race with Jason Stratham and Bangkok Dangerous with Nicholas Cage) over the weekend and Kevin wanted to see them too so we burned them on CD’s.

Then I had another look at my sailing game and I am happy to announce that for the first time in my life I crossed the equator in a sailing yacht! OK, a virtual one at that, perhaps at a later stage in life I will be able to do it for real!

Last night I talked for a long time with my good old friend David who lives in Barcelona and he actually gave me an idea worthwhile considering: buy a yacht and live on that during the summer months. He will come down to Valencia before the end of the year to check out some sailing charters for his business Sailing Dreams and I am looking forward to do some catching up with him!

OK, getting ready for school now, start of the complex past tense…

Another reason to write today is because I have an hour extra. Wintertime, not used to anymore, but a nice enough concept to make the shorter days seem longer…

On Monday I heard from the moving company that my shipment is due to arrive on November 29. This means I have to get my papers in order a week orso before, that is if I don’t want to pay import tax. On Tuesday I went with my lawyer to the town hall where she arranged the first step in the long “papeleo” process (red tape): the permiso residencia y trabajo, something like a temporary residence permit that allows for working too.
Next week we will go to the police office for foreigners to arrange for my NIE (without this paper you can hardly do anything here), step two and after that more steps have to follow to come to full legal status.

In the meantime Mia has arranged all her paperwork at the Spanish Embassy in Beijing and school has even called them to make sure everything is in order; hopefully that helped to push her file onto the right pile!

On Wednesday it was “Happy Miercoles” again and we went with a bunch of people to the Irish Pub. The CEO of Babylon Idiomas was also there, a fellow Dutchman and it was very nice meeting and talking with him! Afterwards we went for dinner and a couple of bars and discos. Ideal to have classes in the afternoon!

Talking of which, we are booking great progress. Next week we will move on to the past tense which brings us to the end of the first book and on to level A2! Basically that means that by the end of my 12 week course I should be at the start of level B2, enabling me to speak pretty good Spanish on a light conversational level, great!

Yesterday I went to Sala Parpall‚àö‚â•, a museum in my street where they have an exposition of a Chinese photographer He Chong Yue. He has taken pictures of the large tiled family planning propaganda signs you will find in the countryside of China. On each of the signs he has hung a mirror, so you can also see him taking the pictures. Nice enough to have a look around.

With the Volvo Ocean Race Game I was stuck in the Doldrums most of the week, but it seems that I finally have left them behind and I can make myself ready for the southern trade winds on my way to Cape Town. I managed to climb to a position around 8,500 but lost that again due to the lack of wind. Now on 12,539 of more than 41,000 competitors.

And today I had a nice stroll in the park enjoying the warmth of the sun.

I have been cooking a lot lately, all kinds of delicious stuff and tonight it will be ensalada de espinaca.