Volvo Ocean Race: Short leg, Tall challenge

Lisbon, Portugal (June 7, 2015; Day 1) – Overall Volvo Ocean Race leaders, Ian Walker (GBR) and his seven Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing crewmates, left Lisbon for Leg 8 to Lorient, France, on Sunday with their eyes glued on the weather forecast – and the progress of their two closest rivals.

The penultimate 647-nautical mile (nm) stage is the shortest of the nine-month race by some way, but no less challenging for that.

“There are light winds chasing up the Portuguese coast,” noted Walker, “but by the time we get to Cape Finisterre, it should be a dead beat to Lorient (France), and probably quite windy, over 30 knots. It’ll be interesting as we haven’t had a lot of upwind in this race. We don’t really know what the pecking order is in these conditions, so it could be a very different leg from the others.”

The fleet, restored to seven boats again after the return of Team Vestas Wind (Chris Nicholson/AUS) in Lisbon, following the rebuild from the collision with a reef in Leg 2, should take three to four days to reach Lorient on the Brittany coast.

In-form MAPFRE made the early pace on Sunday at the start of Leg 8 (1400 local time/1300 UTC), only to be relegated to second place by Team Brunel (Bouwe Bekking/NED) as the fleet left the final mark behind. Conditions in the Tagus River proved to be extremely challenging as the fleet attempted to deal with the tough, near windless conditions, couple with a very strong tide.

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, however, were towards the back of the pack, not quite the start that Walker and his crew would have wanted. The race is intriguingly poised with the Emirati boat, on paper, able to clinch overall victory if results go their way when the boats arrive after around four days of sailing.

However, he brushed aside all premature talk of that prospect at the pre-leg press conference on Friday.

“There’s a lot of this race left,” he said. “I’ve seen Admiral’s Cups lost in the dying seconds. We’re a long, long way from winning this race. When you start to think you’ve got it won, that’s when you start to lose.”

It is not just Team Brunel and Dongfeng Race Team (Charles Caudrelier/FRA), who will want to upset Walker’s bid to claim the trophy. MAPFRE (Xabi Fernández/ESP) are currently in red-hot form. They were narrowly pipped at the end of Leg 7 into Lisbon by Team Brunel, but bounced back with a paper-thin, in-port race victory here on Saturday at the expense of Walker’s boat.

Similarly, Team Alvimedica (Charlie Enright/USA) are improving leg on leg, and have garnered two podium places in the last 10 days: third in Leg 7 and the same position in the in-port race. They spent much of their pre-race build-up based in Lisbon, training in the Tagus River and nearby Cascais and were hoping to make that local know-how pay in the early stages of the leg.

Team Vestas Wind are simply delighted to be back in the mix again, after climbing their own Everest to repair their shattered boat in time to re-join the fleet for the final two legs.

Team SCA (Sam Davies/GBR) know that the last two, sprint, coastal legs offer them their best chance of upsetting the established order of dominance. They too have improved leg after leg, but that progress has yet to be rewarded on the scoreboard. Davies, whose home is near Lorient, would love nothing better than to claim their best results at the climax of the 12th edition.

“It’s a shorter leg, a sprint, which is a little bit different. We know that we can stay with the group – we’ve been in the lead after three or four days in other legs,” she said in a pre-leg interview. We have a good chance. These last two legs are the ones that stay in everyone’s memory at the end of the race.”

The fleet is expected to reach Lorient early on Thursday (June 11). Notable on the crew list is that Xabi Fernández has been confirmed as MAPFRE’s skipper for Leg 8, stepping in for Iker Martínez who must fulfill pre-race commitments to train with the Nacra 17 class for the Rio 2016 Games.

The fleet will have a short maintenance period there before setting off for the final leg to Gothenburg, via a pit-stop in The Hague, on Tuesday, June 16.

 

Leg 8 (647 nm) Position Report (as of 21:44 UTC)
1. MAPFRE, Iker Martínez (ESP), 664.3 nm Distance to Finish
2. Team Alvimedica, Charlie Enright (USA), 0.3 nm Distance to Lead
3. Team SCA, Sam Davies (GBR), 0.6 nm DTL
4. Dongfeng Race Team, Charles Caudrelier (FRA), 1.6 nm DTL
5. Team Brunel, Bouwe Bekking (NED), 1.6 nm DTL
6. Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, Ian Walker (GBR), 1.7 nm DTL
7. Team Vestas Wind, Chris Nicholson (AUS) 2.5 nm DTL

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Background: The 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race began in Alicante, Spain on Oct. 11 with the final finish on June 27 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Racing the new one design Volvo Ocean 65, seven teams will be scoring points in 9 offshore legs to determine the overall Volvo Ocean Race winner. Additionally, the teams will compete in 10 In-Port races at each stopover for a separate competition, the Volvo Ocean Race In-Port Series. The eighth leg from Lisbon, Portugal to Lorient, France (647 nm) started on June 7 with an ETA on June 11.