Team SCA falls behind

As Dongfeng continues to lead the Volvo Ocean Race down the African coast

Image above courtesy of Expedition and Predictwind

The Volvo Ocean Race fleet continues to gybe down the narrow band of favourable northerly breeze between the giant area of high pressure to its southwest and the African coast.

Early yesterday evening and overnight the fleet managed a long leg on starboard, that gently caused them to diverge from the coast of Western Sahara however this morning they are back to gybing downwind. The navigators would dearly love to be getting some westing in right now in order to have a faster angle down the trades...when they do finally materialise properly....ultimately enabling them to have a more favourable position to make their crossing of the Doldrums. However at present this just isn't possible as going too far west means encroaching on the high and a resultant drop in pressure.

Charles Caudrelier, Pascal Bidegorry, the rest of their French crew and their two newbie Chinese sailors continue to lead the race aboard Dongfeng Race Team, however their margin goes up and down according to whether they are on the making starboard gybe or putting in a losing hitch back into pressure to the southwest. At the latest sched (09:40 UTC) they are on a losing gybe and so their lead over second placed Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing has dropped to 3.4 knots.

The sad news is that while little has changed between the top six boats in terms of their relative distance down the race course now compared to 24 hours ago - in fact Vestas has regained five miles on the race leader over this period, overtaking Team Brunel - the all-female crew on Team SCA has dropped off the back and is now 32 miles from first place, compared to 15 yesterday. In Corinna Halloran's blog from on board (see below), she reports navigator Libby Greenhalgh's explanation that this has come about due to some bad positioning. Let's hope there will be further rolling of the dice that will allow them to recover their deficit.

Positions at 09:40UTC

Looking ahead, the boats will spend the next 24 hours continuing to knock at the eastern side of the high, however tomorrow night the high is forecast to shift away to the west allowing the 'trade winds' to fill finally in across the race track. This should allow the boats to leave the Cape Verde islands, still some 600 miles further up the race track, to port.

From Matt Knighton on board Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing:

As Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing speeds it’s way down the African coastline, there’s a routine that’s beginning to establish itself - a routine that in offshore sailing is seldom seen prior to this one design contest.

For the past two days, it’s been champagne sailing conditions in the North Atlantic. We’ll gybe frequently looking for better wind conditions.  Then check the scheds and see only minute changes to the positioning of the fleet; exhausting, disheartening, and exhilarating all together.

For Skipper Ian Walker, a huge advocate in the shift of the Volvo Ocean Race to one design racing, this is all new territory.

Sitting on the foredeck of Azzam in light breeze, Ian remarked, “What I didn’t expect was just how close we would be 7 days into the race with less than 10 miles separating everyone.”

There is a slow realisation setting in: that this leg could be this close the whole way to Cape Town; that this race could be like this all the way to the finish in Gothenburg.

“I keep wondering is if this is going to become like Basketball, where you watch 38 minutes of a close game to get to the last 2 minutes when there’s this intense finish.”

A stark contrast to the last edition of the race, Emirati crewmember Adil Khalid has seen several differences that he thinks makes the race more exciting and challenging: “Everyday you’re learning something new from different boats.  It’s making the race stronger day by day and the different wind conditions are making the teams stronger.  It’s not like the last race where teams wouldn’t see each other for a while.  Now you’re racing within 5 miles or even 100 meters of each other.  I think it’s great.”

Yann Riou reports from Dongfeng Race Team

“First time I see Africa” (Horace)

I have never sailed so close to the African Coast!

Me neither! (Yann)

Me, this is the first time I see Africa!

This is surprising to sail so close along the Western Sahara coast. We’re almost being tourists! Sand dunes, villages, surf spots. All of that and we’re surfing nicely with the A3 (spinnaker) up, usually above 10 knots of boat speed. We’re not forgetting about the race that would be a shame as we’re leading but it allows us to escape a little….

“Do you have a Chinese keyboard?” (Horace)

Horace would like to email his family. Problem: the onboard computer, the one used for personal communications, isn’t set up for Chinese writing. It’s only from the media computer, with a phonetic option, that he will write his emails. Not a problem for Wolf, who writes to his girlfriend in English!

And after?

Downwind, more downwind. We’re totally in our watch system now, and we’re making the most of our free time, resting. On deck, we focus to try and keep our very small lead – and if possible, increase it.

Have a nice day!

From Corinna Halloran on Team SCA:

“We went from hero to zero, well not quite zero” Libby the navigator explained. “We kind of knew it was coming because you could see the boats [sail away]. We had a tricky night and then in the morning we didn’t quite position ourselves correctly. We had the opportunity too which is more frustrating - we were within 2 miles of the boat that’s ahead of us by about 15 miles.”

This edition of the Volvo Ocean Race has been incredibly interesting because the boats are the same. In the past, boats lost sight of each other within 24 hour; this time, on day six, the boats were still very much in sight of each other. As we all know, this is incredibly thrilling!!

However, when you see a boat slip away it can be a bit heart breaking. Yesterday afternoon, despite the sunny skies, the mood on the boat was about as low as the wind speed - pretty low. Libby and Sam were especially bummed out for letting the leaders of the fleet slip away.

But we’re a team. And together we work as a team, so when one girl is feeling a bit low, it’s part of our job to bring her spirits back up. This is also a 6,700 mile leg, anything can happen in the next few weeks and there will be losses and then gains.

“As Sam keeps telling me, we’re only a sixth of the way into the race,” Libby said. “There’s still 5,500 miles to go, and there is some pretty big decisions to still happen. So we’re going to go find our ladder and climb up it there.”

However there’s another aspect of our team that is becoming pivotal to us on the boat, and it was this part of the team that really changed the mood on the boat yesterday evening. Our support network - our team of thousands of international fans - honestly changed our day yesterday.
Yesterday, notes of encouragement from our social network were sent through. Like I said in yesterday’s blog: they help us push and they make our day. To hear that people who never heard of the Volvo Ocean Race before Team SCA are glued to following our team is incredible!

Our support team though doesn’t just exist in the online social world though. Yesterday, as we waited “patiently” for the 1915UTC position report, we had the ultimate surprise: the Spanish Navy came to say hello! The big Naval ship came up from behind us, turned head to wind, and launched their smaller boat filled with six Spanish Navy officers carrying the Spanish flag.

At full speed, with smiles the size of the moon, the Navy officers in the rib shouted words of encouragement for us: “GO! GO! GO!” “GOOD LUCK!” The Officers took selfies and photos of us sailing along at a stead 14 knots downwind. In true Spanish fashion they waved their Spanish flag—it was as if they were at a football match! And when we thought they had turned away for good, the mother ship came to have a look! We were seriously impressed with their display of enthusiasm for Team SCA as we raced to Cape Town.

So here we are, in the middle of the Ocean, and we have fans cheering us on—some we can see and some we cannot—encouraging us to get through the bad “scheds” and push harder to come back from an upset. In whatever form, it’s an incredibly humbling experience to see how excited people are for us, and for you we keep sailing harder and faster.