Volvo Ocean Race - Worst 24 hours of the race so far

by Dongfeng Race Team on 21 May 2015 Volvo Ocean Race - Yesterday was probably the worst 24 hours of the race so far in terms of position loss – at one point from leading most of the way since Newport, the disappointed, but still determined, men of Dongfeng were 35 miles behind Brunel, a huge distance in the current conditions and in this One Design fleet.

Fortunately Pascal’s wish for a better day today at least came partly true and overnight things started to get a little better with some of the loss reclaimed. As Brunel suffered from a little less wind in their more southerly position this morning saw MAPFRE seize an opportunity to take the lead and once more, the unpredictability of this race prevails.

Approaching the ice limit at most southern section, which has acted like a mark of the course with all fleet rounding it at the same point.

Now under 2000 miles on a direct line – but how will fleet tackle the massive barrier of the Azores Anticyclone ahead of them? About 800 miles to go before arriving near the windless centre of this – which lies exactly on the direct route – so will the fleet take a chance, or try to head north or south?

“Today for us is like the sun. There is no sun.” Pascal with grey skies in the background.

“We don’t like clouds, and obviously, they don’t like us either” Charles

“ I don’t think we deserve this” Charles

“This is a total mess. The wind was coming from everywhere, and now, it does not come at all… Thomas Rouxel

The frustration onboard evident in this nice little video from Yann

Imagine you go to sleep and you wake up to find your house has been robbed. You don’t know how, or what you did wrong – all the doors and windows were locked! Your only hope is that you will find a way to recover your losses!

Dongfeng just had quite possibly the worst 24 hours in the whole race to date – losing 35 miles to Brunel, for no obvious tactical reason! A nasty cloud, pinned both Team SCA and Dongfeng firmly to the ocean, whilst the Dutch sailed away towards Lisbon as if nothing had happened. All this in a transition zone, in the Gulf Stream, waiting for a new south westerly breeze to fill in which it has now done – a wind that will take the fleet in a straight line of sorts, around the ice limit and towards the big barrier in front of them – the Azores Anticyclone. As Charles Caudrelier said at the beginning of this leg: “This is a navigators leg.'

It's hard to describe the sinking feeling in your heart and mind when you log on to pick up the position report after six hours of seeing only your nearest competitors on AIS – to read that you are now fifth, and 35 miles down, to the one team that you are most worried about behind you on the race leaderboard. A Brunel first and Dongfeng fifth, would basically push the Chinese team down one on the leaderboard.

Thankfully the winds of change are upon the fleet and with still 2000 miles to go we know anything can happen. We just have to have faith in the men who to date have proved the impossible possible.

Blog from Charles at midnight last night – Before the overnight gains that have at least re-compressed the fleet a bit:

We’ve taken a huge punch.

Big loss for us over last 24 hours.

Last night Brunel has taken off in front of all of us. Whilst the rest of the fleet were stuck, they somehow managed to keep the wind all night.
And this morning, just a few metres from us, it was the turn of Mapfre, then Abu Dhabi and even Alvimedica who had been five miles directly behind us, to do the same thing.
With the girls of SCA, it has been an expensive transition.
Brunel is 35 miles in front, and the others 10.
In less than one hour, we lost 10 miles on them.

What makes it worse is that we had actually been quite happy with our positioning leading up to this transition, to the north of the fleet where we the wind was expected to arrive first.
The Gulf Stream really destabilises things in this area, and the wind changes become random and unpredictable.

So we’ve not had much luck or success in the last 24 hours, but the wheel of fortune is spinning again and we’re going to need a lot of patience to get across this enormous Azores anticyclone which continues to block our route. We were impatient to tackle this trans-Atlantic, expecting speed records and great battles along the way, instead it's a war of nerves in very calm conditions.