It’s been a long speed contest for the four IMOCAs racing to the northeast, away from the Brazilian coast, on Leg 4 of The Ocean Race 2022-23.
For over 24 hours they had been racing close to the wind on port tack, heading offshore. As The Ocean Race meteorologist Christian Dumard notes: “Very shifty and unstable upwind conditions.”
But over the next 48 hours, the teams will need to transition into building easterly trade winds which should carry them up to the doldrums. In these conditions, speed is king — and the fleet has closed up, with all four boats within 16 miles on the tracker as of 1800 UTC on Friday (28 April).
“It’s likely to be gusty but generally quite light,” said Alan Roberts on Biotherm. “We have Malizia just a mile away, and GUYOT a bit further back and 11th Hour Racing just up in front of us…
“The fleet has been compressing for the last few hours and I think it’s going to continue to do so. These next hours are going to be key to get into the new breeze and starting the next phase of the race which is going to be reaching up the Brazilian coast.”
As the boats sail away from the coast, they are leaving behind two exclusion zones: a couple for some big oil fields that include a lot of installations and commercial traffic and one just off the coast, marking the Abrolhos Bank, a known area for marine wildlife.
Damian Foxall on the 11th Hour Racing Team sent some notes back on the reasons behind some of the nature-specific exclusion zones, including this one: “We have one here called the Abrolhos Banks which is one of the zones where up to 25,000 southern Right Whales and Humpbacks come to from Antartica, where the warmer waters are, and to breed. We are a month away from this activity, but just to be safe, the organisers have defined this exclusion zone for us to sail around.”
Meanwhile, Team Holcim-PRB have come up with a plan to sail the boat to Rio, under jury rig, where they will fit a spare mast and rejoin the race after their dismasting disaster on Thursday (27 April). Escoffier and his team hope to reach Rio on Saturday (29 April) using this configuration.
The logistics and timings behind this operation are complicated. But with support from the experts on the GAC Pindar operations team, Kevin Escoffier’s crew and shore team are working on multiple potential solutions to get the mast from Lorient in France to Rio in the most efficient way that will support a very tight timeline.
The shore crew will help fit the new mast and the team intends to finish Leg 4 to collect at least one point and maintain its position at the top of the overall race rankings.
Leg Four Rankings at 1800 UTC, 28 April
- 11th Hour Racing Team, distance to finish, 4,184.8 miles
- Team Malizia, distance to lead, 6.6 miles
- GUYOT enironnement - Team Europe, distance to lead, 14.2 miles
- Biotherm, distance to lead, 16 miles
- Team Holcim-PRB, racing suspended
Find the latest fleet positions on the race tracker at theoceanrace.com.
