The B&G Report - Volvo Ocean Race - Leg 7 Week 2 Review

by Mark Chisnell on 31 May 2015 Top Volvo Ocean Race correspondent, navigator and sailing analyst, Mark Chisnell writes a regular report for B&G on the current race and trends he sees developing. This week he previews Leg 7.

Mark Chisnell – Leg 7 Report 2 – Tripped up by the High

Nine days into Leg 7 and with less than 300 miles to the finish in Lisbon, the overall leader Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing could be in deep trouble. They could lose half or more of their overall lead to the chasing Dongfeng Race Team after a bruising encounter with the Azores High. Everything will depend on who can claw their way past the boats in front in the final approach to a tricky finish on the Tagus River.

Double Trouble

It looked like this was going to be a very testing leg when we ran the B&G Deckman software a week ago and saw that the fleet would have to negotiate the light winds of both a fading low pressure system, and then the centre of the Azores High, before they could reach the trade winds for a fast final blast to Lisbon. It’s played out almost exactly as we expected, with the Azores High turning out to be the critical hurdle, potentially a pivot point on which the whole race might turn.
Report 2 - 1

I don’t want to spend too much time on the early part of the last week, as it didn’t change much. So let’s just have a quick look at Pic 1 from 06:40, Wednesday morning 20th May. The fleet were still in a tight bunch, and headed for the ice exclusion zone (IEZ – the blue line) in a fading wind, as the low pressure system that had powered them all the way from Newport filled and weakened. Team Brunel and Mapfre went through the light air zone further south than the rest, and both gained. It allowed Team Brunel to extend their lead to over 20 miles, while Mapfre pulled up into second place.

Tactical Options Narrow

The reason they were all high-tailing it for the IEZ was that a new low pressure system was now forecast to storm across the North Atlantic to the north of them. This weather system meant that the north was the only place to be and – when combined with the fact that they had to stay south of the IEZ – the outcome was that the tactical options would narrow to almost zero over the next couple of days.

But there was still time for some gains and losses – Team Brunel took a shorter, more southerly route into the corner of the IEZ where everyone converged, and ended up with less wind than the rest of the fleet to the north. I suspect that this was just a simple matter of the wind speed dropping to the south, away from that big northern low pressure moving through. Whatever, by the time they hit the IEZ the fleet had reeled Team Brunel back in.

For the rest of this review click here