Team Malizia takes the lead of Leg 3 in The Ocean Race
by Team Malizia 17 Mar 2023 11:34 PDT
Co-skipper Will Harris onboard Malizia - Seaexplorer during Leg 3 of The Ocean Race © Antoine Auriol - Team Malizia
The international crew skippered by Boris Herrmann has taken the lead of the Southern Ocean leg of The Ocean Race after nearly three weeks of eventful sailing.
After a complicated start to Leg 3 of the round-the-world race, with several difficult repairs, notably the mast repair which Team Malizia managed brilliantly, the tracker updates have been getting more and more exciting lately! Team Malizia crossed the scoring gate south of Australia on Sunday 12 March at 23:44:08 UTC in second position, grabbing four hard-earned points in the ranking. Slowly but surely, the crew skippered by German sailor Boris Herrmann has been closing the gap to Team Holcim-PRB and today, at the 15:00 UTC tracker update, Team Malizia took over the lead! The gap to Holcim might only be 3.0 nm at the time of this publication and the fleet will compress once the boats reach the light zone ahead of them. Nevertheless, the Malizia - Seaexplorer crew composed of Herrmann, co-skippers Will Harris, Rosalin Kuiper, Nico Lunven, and onboard reporter Antoine Auriol is very excited to see their team's name at the top of the Leg's ranking.
Rosalin Kuiper, who is currently on watch, said in an audio message to the shore team: "We are leading the fleet at the moment, after almost three weeks of sailing! It's looking like Nico's [Lunven] strategy is turning out to be the right one, it's super nice to be in this position right now, although it's very tricky as we are sailing towards a ridge, a high pressure. We expect all the boats to slow down this weekend and there will be a new start line. We have had a bit of rest in the past few days, and a bit less wind than before which allowed the crew to sleep. We did all the checks on the boat and we are ready for another race towards Itajaí which would start this Sunday when the wind will pick up again. It's still a long way to go but also very exciting to be in the lead!"