Volvo Ocean Race - Whether the Weather again
by Volvo Ocean Race on 25 Mar 2015
Team SCA - Volvo Ocean Race 2015 Anna-Lena Elled/Team SCA
A day of team building, a day of character building! The magenta boat of Team SCA was, for a short time this morning a white boat - as a 50kt hail squall passed over. After last night’s rough riding, spirits were high enough to find the fun side of the grim weather with a ‘snowball' fight.
They sustained superficial damage to the mainsail where battens snapped and broke through, something Mapfre luckily managed to avoid in their Chinese gybe.
When we saw them reinforcing the hull with strips of carbon, some of us spotted they were using the spare sail battens, and with them now glued to the boat they cannot afford to have too many more gybing issues.
Even with last night’s dramas, the fearless Mapfre have continued to push hard through the fleet and have now taken second place on the 2000 report.
Last night we spoke about the northern option being long gone, but now, however, due to the changeable weather system that the boats are sailing in, it looks like it could be a legitimate option once again.
On the latest GRIBs, the low will now split and form a new low to the north of the fleet, our current routings are showing this could be 7 hours faster to Cape Horn although 400 miles longer and in 35-40kt winds.
With the events of the past 24 hours behind them you could imagine some of the fleet opting for the safer, southern option ensuring completion of the leg, however the trigger for the northern route would probably be pulled by Brunel who so far as we know have not had a major drama like some of the other teams.
Bouwe is however known among his crew for keeping his team and his boat safe, but if they continue on the routing taking them to the ice limit, then they will reach the light winds first, allowing the whole fleet to catch them up with the new wind coming from behind.
North is a high risk and hard to execute, but if you manage to catch, track and predict the low perfectly (which currently doesn’t exist) then it could equal high reward.
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