Team Holcim-PRB hold a narrow lead in Leg 4 of The Ocean Race Europe on Monday 1 September as the IMOCA fleet rounds Corsica after a closely fought overnight battle.
As of noon on Monday, the Swiss team were ahead on the tracker but with Biotherm and Team Paprec Arkéa close behind, who would lead into the Bonifacio Strait was too close to call.
After a tense moonlit night of light-airs sailing that saw the tightly packed seven-boat fleet sailing line-abreast at times, as the crews picked their way south through patches of no wind strewn across their path, on Monday the leading trio — Holcim-PRB (SUI), Biotherm (FRA) and Team Paprec Arkéa (FRA) — were closing in on the Bonifacio Strait that separates the islands of Corsica and Sardinia.
Biotherm, skippered by Paul Meilhat, took the maximum two points at the Monaco Scoring Gate on Sunday evening after cutting inside the fleet at Cape Ferat to snatch the lead from Holcim-PRB — skippered on this leg by Nico Lunven (FRA) — who had to settle for one bonus point for passing Monaco in second place.
As the fleet turned south, however, it was Yoann Richomme’s Team Paprec Arkéa that positioned themselves best as the winds died away overnight, holding speed more consistently than the rest to eke out a tenuous one-mile lead during the hours of darkness.
With the breeze down below six knots, concentration was at a premium as the crews tweaked their sail configurations and pored over their navigation screens to try to keep their boats moving south.
When a fresh breeze did eventually arrive around 0200, it was the leading group, plus Ambrogio Beccaria’s Allagrande Mapei Racing (ITA), that poked their bows into it first, leaping to boatspeeds in the mid teens to early 20 knots, to quickly extend away from the remaining group made up of Boris Herrmann’s Team Malizia (GER), Scott Shawyer’s Canada Ocean Racing – Be Water Positive and Alan Roura’s Team Amaala (SUI/KSA).
“So our first night at sea didn’t really go according to plan,” said Team Malizia’s Cole Brauer (USA). “We knew we had taken a risk pretty much as soon as we had left Monaco. We had talked about how we were going to soak low and get on the other side of this low pressure that was moving northeast.
“We took the risk by sailing less distance — which made us look really good in the beginning, but when the low passed us the guys who were off to the west of us got the pressure before we did. They were blasting away while we were just sitting ducks — and that was so disappointing.”
Shortly before dawn, at the front of the fleet, after the leading trio tacked to the east towards Bonafacio, Biotherm and Holcim-PRB and Allagrande Mapei all closed up on Team Paprec Arkéa.
At 1200 CEST today, Holcim-PRB held the lead on the tracker, but with the other three crews all within easy striking distance. And that remains the case on Monday evening after the leading foursome passed the strait and turned north -accessing the 10-knot southeasterly winds that will send the leaders ripping towards the Leg 4 finish line in Genoa, Italy.
Find out how to catch all the action live via The Ocean Race website.
