I just received word that leg 3 of the Volvo Ocean Race will have to be restarted! This will affect all 98,000 racers who took off from Cochin on Saturday. Apparently, the Race Committee didn't make it clear that all boats have to go south of Sri Lanka, even though that is the intended course. To avoid thousands of potential requests for redress, the RC has decided to throw in the towel on the leg and simply start over. Read the full article here.
In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about the online Volvo Ocean Race Game, (VolvoOceanRaceGame.org) the increasingly popular flash game that parallels the actual VOR. You may have read about it an another one of my blog posts. You can sign up and play for free, and the best news is, you'll be even with the rest of us for this leg. You've only missed 2 legs out of the 10 total. If your best 7 finishes get you the lowest score, you win a car. Seriously!
I don't know if you've been following my boat, SAILGROOVE DOT ORG, but I'm way behind. My computer has been without power cord for 2 days and when I am able to borrow one, I've had other things to work on... Mainly, I just forgot to look. My boat is way South of where it wants to be and I sailed over 36 hours at a wind angle that is nowhere near optimal.
So, if you ask me, this restart thing is a great idea, clearly the only fair way to handle a pretty major screwup on the part of the race organizers. But I can only imagine what the top 10% of the fleet was thinking when they went to log in for the 25th time today and found that though they had been in 300th place (again, out of 98,000) due to their carefully thought-out tactics, hours of time on their TI-83 calculator, a $30 shell-out for a professional online weather forecast, and almost no sleep due to their constant vigilance, they are now dead even with me, the guy who forgot to log on for the first two days after the start.
I would be SO PISSED. I would write angry letters and blog my fingers off. I would send hate mail to every one of the sailors who went north of Sri Lanka. I might even consider dropping out and joining the Vendee Globe Virtual Race, except that it's so well along now I couldn't win the 10,000 Euros.
What will this do to the fleet? Will people lose their enthusiasm for the game? Respect for the organizers? Faith in the online sailing community as a whole. YOU BETTER NOT. Think of it this way, unless you were winning, this is your second chance. At 11:00 (GMT +1) on December 16th, you will be tied for first. If you quit your job, read a few books on meteorology and advanced geometry, and learn to sleep in 2-hour shifts, you could have your first VOR win under your belt before Christmas.
