Alex Thomson Racing video update: Will Alex ever sleep?
Editor’s Note: On Sunday, November 8, Alex Thomson set sail from France as a competitor in the Vendée Globe, a solo, non-stop, unassisted, around-the-world race that pits Alex against the elements and 32 other skippers. Nokia Bell Labs is the technology partner to Alex Thomson Racing, augmenting the skipper and his HUGO BOSS boat with a host of technologies designed to make him a better sailor. We will share insights into how these technologies are supporting Alex through a series of weekly reports on our Alex Thomson Racing website and updates on the Bell Labs blog.
The Vendée Globe is off to a tumultuous start with the competitors encountering rough seas and heavy winds, leading to some of the boats suffering damage. HUGO BOSS emerged relatively unscathed, as Alex only had to contend with fishing gear caught on his rudder and foil. Those following Alex’s biosigns in the Hub, however, have likely noticed Alex has appeared to get no sleep whatsoever in the first few days of the race.
As Alex Thomson Racing Technical Director Ross Daniel explains: “Alex compared the conditions he was experiencing onboard to being in the Doldrums with very unstable wind, gusting from 9 to 18 knots. This means that you very quickly go from being underpowered to overpowered, and the boat constantly needs your attention to either ease the sheets or wind them in. There was therefore no real time to sleep. He’s managed to take some short rest periods but is looking forward to trying to get into a routine and banking some sleep.”
What you and I would call sleep, though, isn’t the same as what Alex calls sleep. In our first video update from the race, Alex Thomson Racing’s Jesse Rowse and Nokia Bell Labs’ Sean Kennedy discuss why what little rest Thomson is managing barely registers in Alex’s sensor readings as well as the difficulties of calibrating a baseline for sleep in this early chaotic stage of the race.
