Volvo, BRW, AC 18 footers and more

by Rob Kothe & Jedda Murphy on 23 Feb 2015 The Volvo Ocean Race fleet are now in the southern hemisphere heading for Auckland. Ahead leg 5 deep into the Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn, this is the part of this round the world race that will sort the men and women from the boys and girls.

In this leg 4, Brunel has sailed an excellent tactical race so far, heading northish out of Sanya China, the Dutch team went round the fleet to hit the lead but the doldrums took that away.

With 2000 nautical miles to go, the fleet is now very even, while the Dutch team notionally lost the lead on Saturday ad regained it on Sunday, only to lose it again within hours, now it’s anyone's race on the rest of the leg into Auckland.

Ian Walker and his Abu Dhabi team are proving to be the most consistent team the four legs so far - Abu Dhabi’s skipper Ian Walker and as this editorial went to air were back in the lead.

Walker said yesterday 'The weather models are struggling to predict the next transition into the westerly winds that will propel us further southeast towards Fiji before we turn for Auckland. Our routing involves a fair amount of guesswork right now. We currently have just over 2,000 miles to go to the finish and things couldn’t be much tighter on the leader board.'

The race could not be tighter, Dongfeng is now just half a mile behind Abu Dhabi and its likely the winner of that duel will lead the fleet ahead of the Cape Horn leg.

Beating them to Cape Horn will be the Barcelona Round the World fleet, stretching over 4,200 nautical miles from leader Cheminées Poujoulat to tail gunners Spirit of Hungary, with two boats in the fleet having taken technical pit stops in the Land of the Long White Cloud, New Zealand. Renault Captur has pit stopped in Wellington NZ with rudder issues and should be back in the race on Monday

Last week we asked some questions about the CEO position at ISAF in this critical period, after the dismaying IPC decision to drop Sailing from the Paralympic roster for Tokyo 2020, we received a lot of feedback agreeing with our position, noteworthy amongst this was a comment from one ISAF veteran who commented that he was equally concerned that ISAF had gone to market with a non-competitive salary package, ruling out many of the top national sports administrators who would feel no need to take a pay cut to move up to an international position. It will be interesting to see what eventuates.

On the weekend Gotta Love It 7 took the 18 footer unofficial World Championship, the JJ Giltinan Shield series on Sydney Harbour. Despite finishing eighth place on Saturday the Gotta Love It 7 team of Seve Jarvin, Sam Newton and Scott Babbage became the 2015 JJ Giltinan champions as a result of the brilliant start to the regatta.

The win gave the Gotta Love It 7 team their seventh JJ Giltinan Trophy, beating Iain Murray's six win mark that he set with the backing of the same sponsor.

Oracle Team USA have been testing their new development foiling AC45 in San Francisco, prior to heading for Bermuda.

Jimmy Spithill and his crew were upbeat 'Two days in and the thing is nearly as quick as the AC72,' said Joey Newton. 'There are some pretty cool things going on that we weren’t even close to doing last time,' added Rome Kirby.

While North America is snowbound and Australia battered by cyclones, the Sail-World team is currently in sometimes sunny, sometimes snowy Copenhagen, Denmark, the home of Sail-World Europe ahead of the RYA Dinghy Show in London.

We will report from Alexandra Palace, London, the Ally Pally next weekend.

Lots of global news today, enjoy and have a great sailing week.