Volvo Ocean Race - Podium compression on the leader-board

by Rob Kothe Sail-World.com on 27 May 2015 Team Brunel (Bouwe Bekking/NED) completed a a tight Newport-Lisbon Leg 7 early on Wednesday to increase their chances of finishing with a podium place in the Volvo Ocean Race and also keep alive the possibility of overall victory.

The Dutch boat sailed an excellent transatlantic leg, edging Spain's MAPFRE (Iker Martínez/ESP) into second place, just 22 minutes behind.

As predicted the breeze died in the Bay of Cascais and behind them, Dongfeng Race Team (Charles Caudrelier/FRA), Team Alvimedica (Charlie Enright/USA) and overall leaders Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (Ian Walker/GBR) were suddenly close together in a three way battle for third place.

Alvimedica sailed into third place but in the Tagus River, Dongfeng came back after a small mistake by Alvimedica and were just a boat length away from their rival.

But then a bad tack from Dongfeng allowed Alvimedica to hold their advantage and take third place by just a couple of hundred metres, with skipper Caudrelier blaming himself for the losing tack.

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing finished fifth and that could open the door again for Team Brunel, currently third overall, who would move within six points of the Emirati boat.

Team SCA (Sam Davies/GBR) were eight miles astern.

Few sailors in the fleet will savour a win over one of the race’s trademark legs more than Team Brunel’s 51-year-old skipper, Bouwe Bekking, in his record-equalling seventh appearance.

He has certainly experienced the ups and downs of sailing the Atlantic. Few will forget the agonising position he faced in 2006 before he was finally forced to abandon his sinking movistar boat during the same stage of that Volvo Ocean Race.

Bekking insisted last week that he had not lost ‘a single night’s sleep’ over the incident and the confident way that Team Brunel sailed the leg would bear that out.

Team Brunel were pushed all the way over the past 24 hours by both MAPFRE and Dongfeng Race Team, especially over the final few miles in a ‘park-up’ in the Tagus River as they approached the Lisbon finish.

'We sailed a tremendous leg but just at the end when there was no wind, it was getting a bit gnarly,' said Bekking. 'But we pulled it off.'

The victory was achieved with two newcomers on board, Adam Minoprio (NZL) and Timo Hagoort (NED), the latter replacing the injured Gerd-Jan Poortman (NED).

'It was good to have those young guys on board, they did a fantastic job,' added Bekking.

The overall race leader Abu Dhabi finished fifth and skipper Ian Walker said dockside ' We lost the race because we were slow down-wind sailing along the Ice wall, after that we had to try something different.'

The final two stages, to Lorient (France) and then Gothenburg (Sweden) via a pit-stop in The Hague (Netherlands), will once again be contested by seven boats.

The overall race leaderboard may change after the Jury hearing of the protests relating to incursions into exclusion zones and wrong directions in traffic separation zones out of Newport.

Team Vestas Wind (Chris Nicholson/AUS) rejoins the fleet for the first time since November 29 when the boat was grounded on a reef in the Indian Ocean.

After a four-month rebuild in the Persico boatyard in Bergamo, Italy, the boat was transported by sea and road to Lisbon, arriving a few hours before the rest of the fleet in the small hours of Wednesday morning.

Over the next few days, the rig will be stepped ahead of the Danish-backed team’s competitive comeback on June 6 in the Lisbon In-Port Race. Leg 8 to Lorient, a relative sprint at 647nm, at Sydney Hobart length, begins a day later.

The 2014-2015 Volvo Ocean race finishes on June 27 with the In-Port Race in Gothenburg after nine months and 38,739nm of sailing, visiting 11 ports and every continent.

Race overall

	Team	Leg 1	Leg 2	Leg 3	Leg 4	Leg 5	Leg 6	Leg 7	Total
1	Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing	1	3	2	2	1	2	5	16
2	Dongfeng Race Team	2	2	1	3	8	1	4	21
3	Team Brunel	3	1	5	5	4	3	1	22
4	MAPFRE	7	4	4	1	2	4	2	26*
5	Team Alvimedica	5	4	3	4	3	5	3	27
6	Team SCA	6	6	6	6	5	6	6	41
7	Team Vestas Wind	4	8	8	8	8	8	8	52

* MAPFRE given two-point penalty after leg five. Read more here.
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