Breeze returns

Volvo Ocean Race six close on the Pakistani coastline

Relief has arrived for the Volvo Ocean Race crews this morning with the wind finally filling in from the NNW, allowing boat speeds to soar from single digits into the early teens. However the fleet remains keen to continue its tour of the Iran-Pakistiani coastline than head on the direct course towards the southern tip of India, which is effectively their next turning mark of the course. 

At the latest sched, the boats have just passed the border between Iran and Pakistan and, following their break on Sunday, Charles Caudrelier's crew on Dongfeng Race Team continues to hold a small but useful lead, currently standing at four miles over Team Brunel and Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.

The reason the fleet has diverged from the great circle is due to a large area of high pressure centred to their southwest, over Oman. The boats will soon gybe away from the Pakistani coast and get back on course as over the next 24 hours the high recedes causing the wind to veer slightly into the northeast with the best pressure (albeit dead downwind) back towards the middle of the course.

Over the next 48 hours, tactical gains and losses will come according to when crews time their gybes, anticipating where the best pressure will be on the race track as the wind continues to veer slowly into the NNW the further south they sail.

Position at 0640 UTC

Image below courtesy of Expedition and Predictwind

From Matt Knighton, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

The middle of the fleet is an uncomfortable place to be. Tacking all morning up the Iranian coastline, we found ourselves buried in messy winds that kept shaking up the positions with no clear way out. Ian and SiFi were determined to try something different.

As all the teams began heading offshore to find more wind, there was a narrow band of race course running along the race imposed Iranian Exclusion Zone. Ian [Walker] decided we would tack inshore and hope the wind would turn to the right as predicted – effectively steering us away from the boundary without having to tack away from it.

Neal [McDonald] was optimistic about the tactics: “I don’t think we’ve seen yet the full benefit of Ian’s tactical wizardry. We probably won’t see it for days to come. The forecast calls for us to keep getting lifted and lifted so it’s going to pay for us to be down there.”

The afternoon wore on as the red boundary moved near. We began to move so close to Iranian waters that even our data transmissions from the boat were becoming intermittent; a suspected casualty of Iranian military interference.

Finally, the lift in the wind came and we turned gently parallel to the exclusion zone. As Brunel, Alvimedica and MAPFRE battled it out between themselves, we silently worked our way inside and around them.

It feels good to be back near the front of the fleet.