The B&G Report- Volvo Ocean Race - And they're off - Leg 1, Week 1
by Mark Chisnell for B&G on 15 Oct 2014
October 12, 2014. Leg 1 onboard Team SCA. Sara Hastreiter and Annie Lush grind hard during a tack. Corinna Halloran / Team SCA
Top Volvo Ocean Race correspondent and analyst, Mark Chisnell writes a regular report for B&G on the current race and trends he sees developing. Here's his analysis of Leg 1 .
Girl Power into the Lead
Scary Spice may be doing a pretty dreadful job on the UK’s X Factor, but it was Girl Power all the way in the opening round of the Volvo Ocean Race. Team SCA’s navigator, Libby Greenhalgh hit one out of the park, with a gorgeous move that saw them first out into the Atlantic.
Opener
The action opened on Sunday evening (12th October) with the fleet bunched together on starboard tack, in a solid south-southwesterly breeze. The wind was coming from a little low pressure system centred near Lisbon (Pic. 1). MAPFRE were leading, with Team SCA just on their hip (to windward and astern) and in third place.
The sun went down, and the breeze backed a little more to the south and dropped. Team SCA and Dongfeng Race Team both tacked to port, everyone else stayed on starboard with the Straits of Gibraltar about 100km to the west – a narrow funnel that heavily influences the wind on both the northern and southern shores, further complicated by the roaring current.
Lights, Cameras... Action!
Dongfeng Race Team then tacked back to stay with the bunch, and by 22:00 on 12th October we had the first serious split of the race (Pic.2) – yay, action! The separation opened fast – as it tends to do when boats are on opposite tacks. Two hours later, when Team SCA tacked back to starboard off the coast of Spain, the main pack were on port and about 40km away, and closer to the coast of Africa.
At this point, Team SCA were in the lead and smoking – they had picked up a north-westerly off the coast, presumably a night-time drainage wind from the land, and had turned it onto a big gain on the leaderboard (Pic 3). They were still well separated from the fleet though, and a gain is not in the bank until you can close down the leverage (leverage is the distance you are from the opposition, measured perpendicular to the course to wherever you want to go next).
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