Out into the South China Sea

Back out into open water, the Volvo Ocean Race boats are now on the wind

Mercifully for the Volvo Ocean Race six, conditions picked up for the latter part of their journey down the remainder of the Strait of Malacca and turning the corner into Singapore Strait.

Leg three's long term leader Dongfeng Race Team reached the southern end of the Strait of Malacca late yesterday morning UTC by which time she had managed to extend her lead over the chasing pack to 90 miles. She then performed a left hand turn, hardening up on to an ENEerly course, to pass Singapore, finally passed out into the open waters of the South China Sea at around 1700 UTC.

Dongfeng Race Team skipper Charles Caudrelier reported: "I’ve been silent these past few days. The high stress passage of the Malacca Straits has totally absorbed us all. Not much wind but lots of manoeuvres, not much sleep, and very hot.

"The result is good, despite from very scary moments, we have managed to rebuild our lead. Beyond that I’ve been able to measure the progression of our team during this phase of the race. When I started this project, of course the Groupama team was the benchmark. We were a huge team with a lot of experience and talent. On paper we were very strong, and despite the success of that project, it didn’t always function perfectly because we weren’t always working in the same direction, with diverse opinions and different ideas. It was the strength of that team, but also its weak point.

"Onboard Dongfeng, everyone has his place, his role, and focuses his efforts to execute it to perfection.  It is this harmony that has created the strength of our team, and makes up for our overall lack of experience onboard the boat. As Bouwe Bekking said, this race is all about team.  We are justifying very well right now our name – Dongfeng Race TEAM"

Meanwhile the chasing pack, led at present by Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, came down the last of the Strait of Malacca in more pressure and was able to regain some miles on the race leader, down to 68 miles at around midnight last night when they exited Singapore Strait, which has further dwindled to 46 miles at the latest sched this morning as the boats forge out on a long port tack into the South China Sea.

Sadly Team SCA has lost more miles in the Strait of Malacca and at the latest sched was still attempting to exit Singapore Strait and is now 87 miles astern of fifth placed Team Alvimedica.

The good news is that that boats are sailing into pressure. The bad news is that the wind is the North East Monsoon, ie on the nose, which means pounding upwind for the next few days, something of a shock to the system following what seems like weeks of benign conditions, even kedging in the Strait of Malacca.

At present the boats are on port tack, erring to the right of the course, and if the forecast proves accurate, are likely to tack once the wind veers from the NNE into the northeast. It seems unlikely that they will continue on until they can clear the east coast of Vietnam once they tack over on to starboard as the GRIBs show better pressure to the north and they will be sailing into a lifting wind on starboard.

With less than 1000 miles of this leg to go before Dongfeng reaches its homeport of Sanya, around 750 miles of this appears to be on the nose, while the forecast shows a short but dangerous transition zone off Vietnam before the wind fills in from the southeast, allowing for a most welcome spinnaker finish.

Images below (click to enlarge) courtesy of Expedition and Predictwind