There are no winners

With the wind still lacking, the irony of the slowest opening leg ever is starting to sink in on the Volvo Ocean Race crews

Aboard Amer Sports One , Grant Dalton is concerned that there will be no time to get his underprepared boat back to full strength before he heads off into the Southern Ocean:

Totally becalmed all night and the dawn has come with an oily ocean and the promise of a very hot day in the direct sunlight. Lets hope the other boats have had a similar night. We are simply trapped by a hole that has developed and come over the fleet. It was predicted, we have watched it on the weather maps now for a couple of days hoping that maybe it would not happen. We believe that by this evening the pattern will start to return more to normal and release us into what may be called a more normal trade wind

When I look out now to the future, I still see the doldrums, the South Atlantic high and the prospect of a time between 35 and 40 days now. For us this would be bad, no time to recover before the start with the lateness of the program, and no time in Cape Town either. Then straight into the Southern Ocean.

The toughest Ocean Race is right now the most boring Ocean Race as we struggle not with the conditions but with the mental boredom of simply being parked for hour after hour and in fact what has now been four or five days of very slow progress.