The B&G Report - Volvo Ocean Race - Leg 6 Week 2 Review

by Mark Chisnell on 3 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 looks back at the second week of Leg 6.

Leg 6 Report 2 – The Tack

The first week of Leg 6 of the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race has produced one of the most entertaining tactical moves so far. When we left the fleet last week, they were being chased offshore from the Brazilian coast by a cold front, and a big Southern Ocean low pressure system that was pushing north.

What goes up must come down, and at some point what leaves the coast has to come back to it, especially when the finish line is over that way. They needed to head for Recife on the north-east Brazilian coast, where they could turn north-west towards Newport. The dilemma over when to head back generated a fair bit of angst and some sizeable losses. Let’s see how it all went down.

Let’s start with Pic 1, showing the fleet at 9.40 21st April (all times are UTC), headed east-northeast in a group. We can see the low pressure and associated cold front right behind them, while ahead of them the wind arrows pick out the anti-clockwise circulation of the wind around the South Atlantic High. It’s centred all the way over to the east, on the right-hand side of the picture, and they are sailing in the northerly breeze from its western edge.

When we ran the B&G Deckman predicted routing software last week, it was pretty clear that offshore was the fastest way to get to Recife. And while there were some complexities and other factors beyond that, it was no great surprise when everyone stayed on port tack and chose the offshore option.

For the rest of this review click here