Convergence The northern boats are gradually coming together…
Convergence
The northern boats are gradually coming together with the southern boats, and while some of the gains Brunel and SCA had on paper have evaporated, a substantial amount remains.
Basically, they gave up distance to get farther north, which gave them a faster route to get east, which means they now have a significantly broader, and therefore faster, wind angle to get south. All the boats now are surfing in the trade winds, but the northern two are several knots faster, such that they should be making up ground on the southern boats over the next few days.
In the latest routing from Campbell Field, Brunel still finishes the leg first, though the 60-mile gap that has opened up between them and SCA means that SCA actually finishes right in among the four boats in the southern group, behind ADOR and Mapfre, but ahead of Alvimedica and Dongfeng.
Presumably he’s using identical polar charts for all six boats, which may be somewhat inaccurate given SCA’s ever-so-slightly but consistently slower speed. But all of that is probably going to be dwarfed by the fact that all the boats are shortly going to have to cross the equatorial doldrums, which could reshuffle things dramatically.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1CuJOH5.
Tags: vor, volvo ocean race.
