Volvo Ocean Race - Seaweed and more seaweed

by Volvo Ocean Race on 1 May 2015 Volvo Ocean Race - Seaweed has played a big part in the last 1000nm of racing, with all teams reporting they have had to stop and back down to clear the foils.

Ian Walker on Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing just emailed in saying: ‘We would have had a really good last position report averaging over 20 knots until the last hour when we got so tangled up in seaweed it caused numerous involuntary broaches, lots of attempts at clearing it and in the end we had to do our second back down.’

I'm sure the situation is similar with Dongfeng Race Team and with only 0.1nm separating them we can be sure both navigators' fingers get shorter waiting for the next schedule at 0700UTC.

With 35nm separating the two boats, the leaders scrap over ground but only find out the fruits of their efforts every six hours.

The whole fleet now has spread enough that no one can see another boat in their line of sight or with the AIS. At some point in the next 24 hours we should start to see all boats make more northerly progress and it will be interesting to see who goes first.

There could be some big gains and losses made in choosing the right time to go - and I wouldn’t be surprised if the times coincide with the release of the six hourly scheds to the boats.

Leader: ADOR
Wind speed: 20.6 knots
Boat speed SOG (15 mins): 22.9 knots
Wind direction: 077º - 082º
Lowest boat speed: TBRU (18.9 knots)
Highest boat speed: DFRT (23.2 knots)
Lowest wind speed: TBRU (16.9 knots)
Highest wind speed: DFRT (23.7 knots)