Volvo Ocean Race Command the Extreme

As night fell on the Volvo Ocean Race fleet, the notorious Agulhas current came into play. Thirty-knot winds whipped six-metre waves into a hurling mass, caused by the wind blowing against the direction of the current. And it’s much more difficult when it’s dark.

And the crews didn’t have much time to acclimatise to the sea state during daylight hours. Ken Read is very aware of what can happen. It was on this leg in the 2008-09 race, which took the fleet from Cape Town to Cochin in India that PUMA’s Il Mostro launched off a wave and landed with a sickening thud, damaging the main longitudinal frame. Ian Walker also ran into trouble on this leg previously when his boat, Green Dragon broke her steering gear and crashed into a horrendous Chinese gybe and, later, when a 50-knot gust ripped through the fleet, her boom snapped. Currently, the fleet is still in sight of one another, as they tack down the coast of South Africa, something very unusual and unexpected in this race.

Coastal navigation requires constant input from the navigators, who have had very little sleep so far, just catnapping between taking bearings and assessing their boat’s performance against those closest to them. However, according to Will Oxley, navigator of CAMPER (Chris Nicholson/AUS), who was in the lead early yesterday, it is much less stressful when you know where the opposition is, and a lot more fun as the crew of Groupama 4 (Franck Cammas/FRA) has discovered after their lonely race during leg one. At 1600 UTC yesterday afternoon, Groupama 4 became the new leader from Team Sanya (Mike Sanderson/NZL) and PUMA’s Mar Mostro and held onto her lead at 1900 UTC to