Final run home

Dongfeng Race Team lining up for epic Volvo Ocean Race leg 3 win

Dongfeng Race Team is currently on the home straight to take line honours in the Volvo Ocean Race's third leg to Sanya. The Franco-Chinese team arriving first into her homeport will hopefully prove to be a big story in the Chinese media and help focus the public in this giant country on sailing.

Charles Caudrelier's team has led the leg from Abu Dhabi since the boats exited the Gulf of Oman seemingly eons ago (in fact 22 days), and over the weekend has done well to maintain her advantage and at the latest sched, with 139 miles to the line, holds a 43 mile lead over second placed Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.

The weekend saw the boats short tacking up the south coast of Vietnam, before splitting from the coast as it turned north on Saturday and finally tacking north to lay Sanya. Dongfeng Race Team made what should be her last significant change of course at 0930 UTC yesterday morning, followed by the chasing pack shortly before 1600 UTC.

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

While the boats have Sanya now in their sights, there is still work to be done by the crews as the wind backs into the east and builds leaving the boats on a fast beam reach and hopefully the chance of finally having a welcome 'good sail' before they reach China.

Among the chasing pack, Ian Walker and the crew of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing have worked hard to consolidate their position in second and have pulled out a 10 mile lead over third placed Team Alvimedica, the US-Turkish team on track for scoring its highest finish in the race so far. However Team Brunel is going to have her work cut out to finish better than fifth. 

Going into this leg Dongfeng Race Team, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Team Brunel were all tied on points in the top position. Assuming the present positions hold over the course of the next day, then it will put Dongfeng Race Team into first place with Abu Dhabi second and Team Brunel tumbling to third.

Matt Knighton reports from Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing: 

Sailing in a straight line was never supposed to be as tense as this. We’ve been pointing at Sanya for almost a day now and fortunately, Alvimedica, MAPFRE and Brunel far enough back to not be in AIS range anymore. The problem – they’re not in AIS range anymore.

The 6-hour skeds are now our only means of keeping track of our competitors. With the wind predicted to lighten ahead we had worried that Brunel and MAPFRE, both whom had tacked later towards the north, were in a good position to work around us. Fortunately, our latest position report showed that they had sailed higher courses and are now slowly filing into a line behind us.

Ian and SiFi have been doing the math down below in the nav station. At this speed Brunel will need to sail 1 knot faster than us the rest of the way to Sanya to catch us. A second place in this leg would surely be a victory for us in the overall standings. Still, no one has flashed signs of optimism yet.

We just furled our headsail and Daryl jumped into the water with fins to clear our keel fin of debris. Sailing at 3 knots, he had just enough time to grab it, swim back up, and catch the transom as it sailed by. We had hooked a blue trash bag.

We’ll need every speed advantage we’ve got to defend our position and stay between Alvimedica and the finish line.

The wheels are starting to come off. We ran out of food bags today so no chocolate bars or sweets. More importantly, we’re down to our last roll of toilet paper. Parko and Neal just sawed a roll of paper towels in half to see us through.