Volvo Ocean Race: Winners and losers

(February 17, 2018; Day 11) – Team AkzoNobel and SHK/Scallywag are the big winners over the past 24 hours as both have had a relatively fast transition through the doldrums.

This has allowed them to gain about 100 miles on the chasing pack who have suffered through some painful moments.

Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE have had the worst of it. Languishing for hour after hour in extremely light and variable winds, while at the same time AkzoNobel and Scallywag were hurrying south at speeds up to 20 knots.

In the middle, Team Brunel and Turn the Tide on Plastic made their escape ahead of the final pair and at 1300 UTC today find themselves making good speed chasing down the leaders.

The next 24 hours look to be slightly more settled with the fleet racing south in moderate westerly winds. But by tomorrow night (UTC), the leaders will be bumping into the second half of this doldrums crossing.

This looks to be a more complicated transition than usual, with cyclone activity to the south of the fleet disrupting the normal weather patterns. It will make the start of the week extremely challenging, and there is likely to be some kind of compression in the fleet with the back markers making gains as the leaders slow.

Regrettably, non-safety communication with the fleet has been disrupted since yesterday evening UTC. Inmarsat confirms that it is currently experiencing an outage of its I-4 F1, L-band satellite, which covers the Asia Pacific region.

The cause has been identified as a spacecraft altitude control issue. Inmarsat is currently implementing the specific recovery activities to establish a safe return to normal operations as soon as possible.

This has impacted the On Board Reporters being able to send media off the boat so the RAW section of www.volvooceanrace.com is not being updated.

However, the safety of the fleet has not been affected by the outage as Race Control is still able to track the boats and send basic messages to the fleet by email via an alternative Inmarsat satellite.

We will have more information on this issue as it becomes available.

Beginning on February 7, Leg 6 is listed as a 6,100 nautical mile course from Hong Kong to Auckland, New Zealand.

For crew lists… click here.

Damage: Only six of the seven teams are competing in Leg 6 as Vestas 11th Hour Racing is repairing their boat following the collision with a fishing boat as they neared the finish line of Leg 4 in Hong Kong. The team shipped their boat to Auckland to complete repairs in time for the March 18 start of Leg 7 to Itajaí, Brazil.

Race details – Tracker – Scoreboard – Race route – Facebook – YouTube

Leg 6 – Position Report (13:00 UTC)
1. Team AkzoNobel (NED), Simeon Tienpont (NED), 2118.07 nm DTF
2. Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag (HKG), David Witt (AUS), 54.79 nm DTL
3. Team Brunel (NED), Bouwe Bekking (NED), 129.86 nm DTL
4. Turn the Tide on Plastic (POR), Dee Caffari (GBR), 183.34 nm DTL
5. Dongfeng Race Team (CHN), Charles Caudrelier (FRA), 224.09 nm DTL
6. MAPFRE (ESP), Xabi Fernández (ESP), 237.29 nm DTL
DNS. Vestas 11th Hour Racing (DEN/USA), Charlie Enright (USA)
DTF – Distance to Finish; DTL – Distance to Lead; DNS – Did Not Start

Overall Results (after 5 of 11 legs)
1. MAPFRE (ESP), Xabi Fernández (ESP), 34 points
2. Dongfeng Race Team (CHN), Charles Caudrelier (FRA), 30
3. Vestas 11th Hour Racing (DEN/USA), Charlie Enright (USA), 23
4. Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag (HKG), David Witt (AUS), 20
5. Team Brunel (NED), Bouwe Bekking (NED), 18
6. Team AkzoNobel (NED), Simeon Tienpont (NED), 15
7. Turn the Tide on Plastic (POR), Dee Caffari (GBR), 9

2017-18 Edition: Entered Teams – Skippers
• Team AkzoNobel (NED), Simeon Tienpont (NED)
• Dongfeng Race Team (CHN), Charles Caudrelier (FRA)
• MAPFRE (ESP), Xabi Fernández (ESP)
• Vestas 11th Hour Racing (DEN/USA), Charlie Enright (USA)
• Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag (HKG), David Witt (AUS)
• Turn the Tide on Plastic (POR), Dee Caffari (GBR)
• Team Brunel (NED), Bouwe Bekking (NED)

Background: Racing the one design Volvo Ocean 65, the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race begins in Alicante, Spain on October 22 2017 with the final finish in The Hague, Netherlands on June 30 2018. In total, the 11-leg race will visit 12 cities in six continents: Alicante, Lisbon, Cape Town, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Auckland, Itajaí, Newport, Cardiff, Gothenburg, and The Hague. A maximum of eight teams will compete.

Source: Volvo Ocean Race