Volvo Ocean Race – Ridge on the menu for Dongfeng
by Yann Riou on 25 Nov 2014
The team keep within 1.5 miles of MAPFRE; they've been together for 24 hours and it continues. Yann Riou / Dongfeng Race Team
Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15. Dongfeng Race Team OBR Yann Riou reports on the crew’s progress.
'At the moment, they’re going faster than what the routing say, and we’re slower than our routing.' (Charles about ADOR)
'I know what he did that and why, but he’s taking some risks. Today will tell us more. If he keeps going faster than us in the ridge, he’ll win it all!'
Speed or speculation?
MAPFRE and Brunel 'walked over us' a bit these past 24 hours. Brunel, yesterday at daytime, by sailing lower than us, and MAPFRE, during the night, sailing lower. Let’s say that the conditions were rather shifty though. Within a couple of hundred meters, we could be in a calm - or in strong gusts.
Maybe they’ve been a bit more successful, or maybe they’ve used this instability better? Either way, we cannot speak of a speed issue. We’re actually gaining on MAPFRE now. Poco a poco.
Ridge coming up
We have a ridge to cross on today’s menu. And when there a ridge to cross, there are tacks to make. The good thing is, we’ve got our two direct competitors in sight so we won’t have a problem knowing what their intentions are.
Vertigo…
Looking at the tracker, we can see that after five days of sailing, we haven’t crossed Cape Town latitude yet… it says a lot about the route
Dongfeng Race Team website
If you want to link to this article then please use this URL: www.sail-world.com/129306
