Start time confirmed

Volvo Ocean Race's fifth leg will depart Auckland on Wednesday (local time)

The Volvo Ocean Race's Leg 5 from Auckland, New Zealand to Itajaí, Brazil, will now start on Wednesday, 18 March at 09:00 local time, or 2000 Tuesday UTC.

“We see a significant change between leaving Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning in easier conditions, and this was also the preference of the majority of the teams,” commented Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad, coming straight out of a meeting with the six teams’ skippers, navigators and weather experts in Auckland.

The fleet is now leaving on Wednesday instead of last Sunday as initially planned.

“The cyclone is still a very severe system near New Zealand. Most of the routes on this leg take you very close to that cyclone for a substantially long period of time.

“Now that we have started delaying because of the cyclone, it’s always a matter of when do you leave, when do you feel that it’s far enough away? What we see is that the system is big, it’s not moved very far, and leaving on Tuesday they’d very quickly be into 40 knots and a very big sea state."

Now less than 48 hours to the start of this 6,776-nautical mile stage across the Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn, Frostad also put things into perspective, reminding the fleet of the actual impact of Tropical Cyclone Pam in the Pacific region.

“This is a cyclone which has killed many people, and created a total disaster in some amazing islands that we just raced through north of New Zealand. It’s not just a weather system, we’re talking about a natural disaster. For me, as a race organiser, I would never even consider starting in that cyclone.

“We know that the system is still out there. We have enough wind readings to know that it’s still strong. There are times when you just simply have to wave the safety flag.”