#VOR - It was another fast night at sea for the Volvo Ocean Race fleet overnight with all teams staying north and west of Madeira, as the official race website reports.
Abby Ehler on Team Brunel — currently in seventh and last place — says the past 24 hours has been a ‘gybe-athon’, with the teams taking it by turns to make progress south and then west.
“Will be interesting to see how the next position report is going to be, as we placed ourselves closely to the northwest part of the island, to use the extra wind compression,” adds the boat’s skipper Bouwe Bekking.
“The next 24 hours we will have to make a call on how far west we go, before we finally make our turn south, one very critical point on this leg."
There are a couple of different options according to the weather models, so it could be an interesting day to see whether someone makes a break away from the rest of the fleet.
"Now the goal is to go west and find the good jibing point and choose where we would like to cross the Doldrums — not easy now that the game is completely open in the South Atlantic,” writes Charles Caudrelier on Dongfeng.
The Chinese boat is currently in fifth place within 13 nautical miles of leaders Vestas 11th Hour Racing, which made incredible gains of 25 nautical miles in just a couple of hours this morning (Tuesday 7 November), nipping more than 5nm past Scallywag, whose crew had one hell of a wipeout in yesterday’s big winds and big seas.
Fortunes were reversed for Annalise Murphy’s team Turn The Tide on Plastic, which slipped from an early morning second place to sixth as of 9am UTC — a loss of 8.5 nautical miles.
Skipper Dee Caffari was earlier looking to the forecast for easing winds as an opportunity to come back into the fleet.
“It seems we can have another 24 hours of this fun sailing before we get some slightly lighter winds,” she said. “Those in front will get them first allowing us to sail into the back of them, I hope, as we are all too aware that we cannot afford to get left too far behind before the Doldrums.
“He who exits first will gain huge and we will have another case of the rich getting richer.”
With less than 19nm separating first from last going into day three of the Leg 2, growing fatigue and is affect on decision making will surely become a bigger factor as the week progresses.
