The start date for the first leg of The Ocean Race 2022-23 has been confirmed, with both IMOCA and VO65 fleets scheduled to burst from the starting blocks in Alicante on Spain’s Mediterranean coast on Sunday 15 January 2023.
There will be race activity throughout 2022, with teams building their campaigns towards prologue racing as well as with The Ocean Race Legends, sustainability and youth programmes ahead of the assembly period in Alicante late in the fourth quarter of the year.
Then, in January, the start of leg one will see the fleets racing away on one of the greatest challenges in sailing and the toughest test of a team in sport — over 31,000 nautical miles (57,000 km) around the planet.
“This marks a change for The Ocean Race, as we adjust to the challenges of this new world with a more compact and exciting race route than ever before,” said Johan Salén, managing director of The Ocean Race.
“We are pleased to have been able to work with our partners in Alicante, which has been the home of the race since 2009, to agree on a start date for leg one that takes advantage of the Christmas and New Year holiday season and allows for maximum stakeholder opportunities in the week leading up to the start as well.”
The opening leg of the race will see both fleets racing for nearly one week to a finish in Cabo Verde. It will be the very first time The Ocean Race has stopped in the African island chain.
From there the race proceeds to Cape Town in South Africa, before starting the longest and most challenging leg in the history of the race: nearly 13,000nm direct through the Southern Ocean and past the three great southern capes — the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn — before a finish in Itajaí, Brazil.
The race then goes to Newport, Rhode Island in the USA; Aarhus in Denmark; The Hague in The Netherlands; and on to a Grand Finale finish in the Mediterranean in Genoa, Italy in the summer of 2023.
Stopover dates for the above stages of the race will be confirmed before the end of the year.
