Volvo Ocean Race - Transition period for Team SCA

by Corinna Halloran on 2 Nov 2014 Corinna Halloran reports on day 21 for Team SCA in the Volvo Ocean Race.

The game is beginning to change. We’re entering into a transition period, where the fleet might get closer together again with the way the weather is forming.

Change is a foot. You can feel it in the air, and you can see it on the charts. Every minute, the water seems a bit cooler and the air has a bit more of a chill. Gone are the sweltering days of the equator, we’re near the Southern Ocean and points far south.

We’re beginning to put in essential maneuvers including gybes and sail changes to get us to Cape Town ASAP. We also are officially under 2,000 nautical miles to go! They’re mini milestones that give us all a tinge of excitement.

We take one day at a time; each day is different—each hour is different. 'The rich will get richer at this point,' Libby said yesterday afternoon. And we all felt like deflated balloons—the distance just kept growing! Yesterday afternoon we couldn’t hit our performance numbers either—we had the best sailors in the correct places and they all said the boat felt slow, but couldn’t figure out why.

By late afternoon though, everything had changed. The wind picked up and decided to stick around a bit longer than expected, waves began crashing over the bow, and we were sailing fast. Everything felt a little better. Even the position report didn’t sting as much.

The game is beginning to change. We’re entering into 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, we stay with the Low pressure that is forming and we hope to pick up. Soon, the rich may no longer stay rich, and this is an incredibly exciting feeling.

This is an endurance race; it’s about giving everything mentally and physically, and not losing hope in the last days. Out here, anything can happen—after all, we still have thousands of miles to go. Team SCA