Volvo Ocean Race - Surfing in the sunshine
by Volvo Ocean Race on 28 Mar 2015
Onboard MAPFRE - Volvo Ocean Race 2015 Francisco Vignale/Mapfre/Volvo Ocean Race
Looking at the tracker right now it reminds me of the 1979 Atari Super Breakout game. The top five boats have been up and down all day, gybing along the ice limit as they head southeast. You see them sailing downwind on port tack doing 18 to 20 knots of speed on average.
They get close to the ice limit, less than one mile to hit that imaginary line and then they gybe northeast again in a close fight to round the Horn first.
In the big picture, is hard to say who is leading. Well obviously if you look at the tracker you will see who is in top of the chart, but having all four within nine nautical miles of each other, this is nothing more than a boxing match, an exchange of lefts and rights in the ring. As my colleague here in Race Control says, it is “awesome” to see how quickly the leaders change.
Out there conditions have been great in the last 12 hours. Sunny day in the Southern Ocean, good westerly breeze from 18 to 25 knots, wave highs of two - three meters. Planing along and occasionally surfing.
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