We’ve been scratching miles back upon “Brunel”, who gained and lost 22 miles in 24 hours. Shortly after reaching the ice exclusion zone, we knew the fleet would compress again like it did in the South Pacific Ocean.
Five Volvo Ocean 65s were sailing together, all within a mile of each other. A pure straight-line drag race.
Step by step, we entered an area of southerly breeze blowing at 17-19 knots – it’s quite warm, too.
Being to windward of Team Brunel, we managed to catch up on them by forcing them to bear away little by little until they were behind us. Then the wind dropped and we wondered whether we should peel from the fractional to the Code 0. A lot of satisfaction and good energy onboard “MAPFRE”. We still had 100 miles to go till the end of the ice limit and all boats were trying to sail as fast as possible.
A failed sail change left “Brunel” behind and little by little we extended our advantage. When we were sailing next to each other, I was cooking and I almost thought they were going to sail into our boat.
After we rounded the corner of the ice limit, the Dutch boat was back ahead with us in second and “Abu Dhabi” close behind followed by “Alvimedica” and “Dongfeng”.
We changed sail, put all the stacking at the back of the boat and started sailing north forced by the high pressure of the Azores.
We expect to sail north round the Azores High in less than 48 hours, and it could get tricky.
“All the boats are together and anything can happen,” says Rob Greenhalgh.
We estimate our arrival in Portugal in five days time.
#vamosMAPFRE!
Francisco Vignale, OBR