Cape Horn, Bergs and a Storm Await Battered Volvo Ocean Race Fleet

ALICANTE, Spain, March 28 (Reuters) – Volvo Ocean Race’s six-strong fleet, already battered by the Southern Ocean, sails in to the hardest a part of the nine-month marathon offshore problem over the subsequent two days.

It is now heading for Cape Horn in southern Chile, a graveyard for numerous sailors because it was first used as a buying and selling route within the early seventeenth century.

The area is the one time within the 38,738-nautical mile race the place the boats are prone to see icebergs and to complicate issues, an enormous storm is increase behind them within the Southern Ocean.

Earlier on Saturday, the Chinese boat Dongfeng Race Team, skippered by Frenchman Charles Caudrelier, led the leg from Auckland to Itajaí, Brazil, however by lower than 10nm from 4 different crews.

Caudrelier admitted that the stress was changing into “wearing” on his eight-man workforce.

“I think it’s unique in the history of the Volvo Ocean Race (launched in 1973) to have a fleet battling like this in these latitudes,” he instructed Reuters on Saturday.

“Tomorrow, we’ll be even further south and the water temperature is going to drop. I’m expecting the hardest part of this race in the next 48 hours.”

Dongfeng was one in all three boats to narrowly keep away from capsizing earlier within the week after they crashed over on their sides halfway by the Southern Ocean on the 6,776nm leg — a so-called ‘Chinese gybe’ or ‘death roll’.

Miraculously, all of the crews averted something extra severe than cuts and bruises and harm to boats have been repaired on the transfer.

After some 3,000nm miles of crusing within the hardest leg of the race, Dongfeng lead by simply 5.1nm from Dutch boat Team Brunel with general leaders Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, MAPFRE (Spain) and Team Alvimedica (Turkey/U.S.) not more than 4nm additional adrift.

The all ladies’s crew of Team SCA (Sweden) had been practically 100nm behind that pack. They and MAPFRE additionally suffered Chinese gybes on Tuesday.

The leg is predicted to conclude round April 5-6 after three weeks of crusing from New Zealand. In all, the boats will sail 9 legs and go to 11 ports. They end the race on June 27 in Gothenburg, Sweden. (Editing by Sudipto Ganguly)