Whoa. ADOR (until recently in the lead; now it’s hard to…
Whoa. ADOR (until recently in the lead; now it’s hard to say) and Vestas (in third) have spent the last several hours literally sailing away from Cape Town. Which would make no sense just looking at the tracker. You have to look at the wind.
They appear to be going for that patch of 20+ knot wind southwest of them. By the next three-hourly update they should be in it. And beyond that, they may be setting themselves up to take a relatively western route across that blue, windless ridge of the Saint Helena high. Brunel, by staying to the east, may be indicating that they’re going to try to cut the corner, crossing the high somewhere east of their current position.
This leg could very well be decided over the next 24 hours. Everything is coming down to how the sailors choose to cross the high. There’s no obvious best path; everyone is going to have to pick a spot and go for it. The fleet will certainly compress as the back-enders keep sailing with the old wind; then they, too, will hit the dead zone and stop.
But there’s dead and then there’s dead. Some routes might slow the boats to a half a knot or less. Others might let them keep sailing at 1 to 2 knots. And whichever boat emerges first is going to catch an express train for Cape Town.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1wEOGeI.
Tags: vor, volvo ocean race.
