2014 - 15 Volvo Ocean Race - The magic number

by Agathe Armand on 2 Nov 2014 2014 - 15 Volvo Ocean Race - Breath turns to vapor in the cold air. Hands are soaked in cold seawater, cheeks red from the bitter temperature. The sailors wear fleece hats, balaclavas, neoprene collars on deck.

This is the Southern Ocean.

Here the wind blows stronger. Large breaking waves constantly cover the deck. The air and water temperature is around 10° Celsius. The rig is humming. The noises, the shocks, and the loads – everything is louder, harder, heavier.

They are in the Roaring Forties.

And that fact alone, the act of sailing in these strong westerly winds, below the 40°S latitude, makes ocean racers happy. Genuinely happy.

'It’s awesome out there,' grins Tom Johnson, one of the youngsters on board Team Vestas Wind.

Tom doesn’t usually say much. But, seeing the Southern Ocean for the first time, he lets go and smiles.

'It’s a bit cloudy, and grey, and cold, but the size of the waves are awesome, the wind is nice, the boat is going quick. It’s pretty nice.'

This sort of sailing, however, comes at a price.

'It’s as if you are in a dishwasher and someone has turned it on,' describes Adil Khalid on Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.

'There’s water everywhere you look and the waves keep coming. You can’t even stand up when the big ones hit you; they’re so heavy it’s like fighting a firehose.'

Life onboard is becoming more and more complicated – if not plain uncomfortable.

'A constant trickle of water drips from the ceiling, almost always getting you down the back,' writes Vestas’ Onboard Reporter, Brian Carlin.

'The floor is just one giant puddle of salt water. Imagine getting out of bed onto a cold wet carpet, ah yes, I have you now. It’s darker than normal, the spray doors are fully zipped up at the hatches, yes that’s to stop the constant penetration of Southern Ocean water below decks.'

On Dongfeng Race Team, the Chinese sailors Wolf and Horace have been sharing the same jacket to protect themselves from the cold.

Brunel’s OBR Stefan Coppers doesn’t have boots his size; Mapfre’s Antonio Cuervas-Mons is borrowing wet weather gear from his team mates because his own stuff was ripped off.

Led by Iker Martínez, the Spanish guys have actually been saving their last coffee sachets for these freezing days. And they will need coffee, because the game is on.

With 1,500 nautical miles left to Cape Town, the teams may gybe some more to dive further south after the ice exclusion zone, but they are finally sailing in the right direction, heading east towards the finish line.

Abu Dhabi in first place are followed by Brunel and Vestas, with Dongfeng in the most southerly position – a bold gybe yesterday brought them back into the leading pack.

Team Alvimedica are hanging on there, north of them. Behind, Mapfre and Team SCA are still in slightly different conditions – but a compression area ahead could very well see them coming back.

'The game is beginning to change,' adds Corinna Halloran, SCA’s OBR. 'We’re entering a transition period, where the fleet might get closer together again with the way the weather is forming. We just have to make sure, whatever we do, that we stay with the low pressure that is forming and we hope to pick up.'

Most of the weather models have the boats finishing within hours of one another in South Africa.

'This is an incredibly exciting feeling.'