The Duty Race Director team (Simon Dryden, Ray Shaw, Martin Vaughan, Don Fraser, Neville Rose, Rob Tanner, Rik Head) continue to monitor the race. Each of us takes on 3 or 4 days of 24 x 7 monitoring. A typical day involves setting the alarm for 6am (after receiving the odd SMS overnight) to review the update from the Weather team and also make our own judgement on the weather. Due to Tropical Cyclone Iris, this has been particularly challenging for Robin Hewitt and Andrew Roberts, our weather experts, who often need to discuss with the BOM duty forecaster.
After reviewing weather and fleet positions, then responding to the odd email from competitors, the position reports and the occasional weather observation start arriving. We enter that into our tracking system along with the log updates. We then have to start chasing two or three competitors who fail to make the sked. We compile the information then forward this to competitors and to the weather team.
The remainder of the day comprises dealing with position declarations (each boat makes a declaration at S17, S9 and N 12), protests and redress requests, media updates and all manner of things. Before you know it, its time for the evening sked again. It’s a time consuming job, taking many hours even without event stoppages and restarts or missed skeds to deal with.
Meanwhile we also keep an eye on the racing, what a blinder Morning Star and Chinese Whisper are having. Its definitely the cat vs the mouse. Good to see The Edge, Allegro and Bartolome through the gate above the Solomons. It will be interesting to watch the tactics of the others through the Solomons. Blue Water Tracks and Utopia are likely to be in for some strong weather soon too so should catch up a bit.