The VOR teams took time off for the holidays, but they’re all back in Abu Dhabi now. Developments from the last few weeks after the cut.

• Alvimedica was awarded a point by the jury for the time they spent standing by Vestas Wind. Basically, Alvimedica gets 4 points for Leg 2, even though they finished fifth. The other boats’ points were left as-is, so Mapfre also gets 4 points for the leg. The change doesn’t make any difference in the standings for now, but could conceivably be important later.
• ADOR sailor Phil Harmer of Australia has a hand injury and some sort of (hopefully minor) illness, so he’ll be off the boat for the in-port race and Leg 3, and will be replaced by 51-year-old British sailor Neal McDonald. McDonald has sailed the race six times before and was already an on-shore coach for the Abu Dhabi team.
• Dongfeng OBR Yann Riao is off the boat until further notice; he received word that has wife has been diagnosed with leukemia, and needs to be home in France to help take care of her and their young daughter. He is being replaced by American Sam Greenfield. On the sailing side, Martin Strömberg and Jin Hao Chen (Horace) are off, replaced by Jack Boutell of Australia and Cheng Ying Kit (Kit) of China. More details in Dongfeng’s press release.
• MAPFRE will lose skipper Iker Martínez for Leg 3 due to a previous commitment involving his 2016 Olympic campaign; he’ll be replaced at skipper by Xabi Fernández, with Rafael Trujillo Villar of Spain also joining the crew. More here.
• SCA bow person Sophie Ciszek, as previously discussed, is out with a back injury. (More details in this article.) She hopes to rejoin the boat for Leg 5. Also leaving for Leg 3 will be Australian Liz Wardley. Joining will be Americans Sally Barkow and Sara Hastreiter, both of whom were on the boat previously for Leg 1.
• The Abu Dhabi in-port race is tomorrow (Friday, January 2, 2015). There should be live coverage starting at 0950 UTC (0150 in California; I don’t think my current level of obsession extends to watching it live, but I’m looking forward to seeing it afterwards). Check the official site or the official app for links to the video.
• The Leg 3 start will be the following day (Saturday, January 3).

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1ydhiNv.

Tags: vor, volvo ocean race.

This entry was posted by jbc on Thursday, January 1st, 2015 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.