It could get quite exciting over the next few weeks… Loving how close the race has been so far…

The wake of Pam

Leg 5, day 2. The teams have reached the Southern Ocean, surfing the wake of ex-Cyclone Pam, they’ve been doing 20 knots of average speed. It’s fast, it’s wet, it’s wild. Here’s what it looks like from the sky.

Posted by The Ocean Race on Friday, March 20, 2015

They are shifting, no where else would you find people chasing after a cyclone (edit: not strictly true, but that far from land in a boat is a bit unlikely)

Nice one – I love how they just treat it like dinghy sailing only bigger.

Isn’t that what it is…

Isn’t that what it is…

Yep, effing big, effing fast dinghies on effing big, effing windy seas!

Stunning! Thanks, Matt!

Oh, and any excuse to post this;

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6JiYwQJ4ho[/video]

and this;

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUYKhyzDjAE[/video]

Some serious sailpower on display all round!

These are small, those are far away. (but otherwise, yeah, wot they said)
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN2DpJhBQHQ[/video]

Great vid Matt

Just reposted to Facebook

Turns out one of ex students is wrote some of the software they are using…

This race with the move to one designs has been easily the best Volvo so far in terms of competitiveness. quite incredible how close the racing is over such huge distances. The finish into Auckland was incredible.

Southern Ocean is what these guys come for (and the wages of course 😉 ) …

I really like watching boat racing… Everything from yacht racing, to unlimited drag boat racing… No idea why, as i’m not a boat person and never have been!
Same goes for watching golf. Weird no?

Same goes for watching golf. Weird no?

Yes, watching other people walk round a manicured bit of countryside while someone else carries their bag is wierd :-p

Just posting because it makes me look good;
[url=https://flic.kr/p/qtEUTZ]00000076[/url] by jeremycarey86, on Flickr

@thisisnotaspoon, no harm in such posts 8)

I recently went to a talk by Tracy Edwards and she was fairly scathing of the Volvo round the world in comparison to the Whitbread. Her 2 objections were that they didn’t go into the Southern Ocean and that the cost of the boats precluded any sort of ‘amateur’ entry.

Is the one you link to a different Volvo sailing race or is the Southern Ocean a new addition?

Ta

An intresting comment Spin

So i googled

Volvo route. Includes the Southern Ocean but looks like in quite short bursts

This is the Whitbread route

Does look more of the Southern Ocean

The Amateur comment cuts both ways. But I’ve heard it said the other way round. To me its a bit like saying that F1 insisted on welded steel tube chasis and the same 2.0 Litre production engines we could all have a go. That’s true but when you see footage like the one above it makes you realise how slow the Whitbread was

A quick google shows that The Whitbread winners were going roundin about 120 days Aggregate.

For comparison Ellen Mcarthur did 95 days on her own in a monohull (I’m not claiming the same route). She did under 72 days in a trimaran

Cheers Ampthill.

Wrangling over routes aside Tracy was a really entertaining speaker and does a lot of good work for female education.

http://www.maidenrescue.org/index.html

Tracey is Tracey (have met her a few times and heard her speak) the Whitbread was fundamentally an amateur event. the Volvo is a full on pro race. the standard of sailing now is very high and the boats are fantastic. it costs about $20m to do a decent Volvo campaign, there are plenty of people who could pay that if they wished, much more money goes into the Americas Cup. Amateur campaigns these days for round the world or ocean races are focused on the Ckass 40’s or older IMOCA 60’s in the Vendee Globe or races like the Route du Rhumb.

Amazing stuff. I love sailing but I can’t even do a 12 hour Scilly crossing without puking a good chunk (!) of the way…

Is that £20M excluding the cost of the boat? I’d have thought these boats cost many times more than that. Shame there is not more promotion and TV coverage (not that i’ve stumbled on any yet). I really got into the Americas Cup last time and used to watch the Whitbread highlights shows.

Apparently Tracey was very sea sick. So she prefered the big races as you had time to recover and then get to enjoy. My only sailing last year was a day boat round the scillies for 6 days. Not excatly high speed but a great area to be allowed to explore in a rented boat

one less racing now 😥

Oh eh.

Donfeng had issues up the top of the mast all last leg, I wonder if it is related.

Then again the broaches and massive speeds of the last couple of weeks must also be a factor. 😉

mast track detachment is not a good thing. But the southern ocean is a beast of a place. Some of the footage even made it onto the BBC website!

😯

*edit* – They look like they are sailing them like mahoooosive International 14’s!

You have to go full chat… it’s the slowing down or stopping dead that breaks them 😆

Yee ha!

Love the pictures comng from this years race.

They shift 2000kg of kit every time they gybe (according to one of the vids on the official site). Gybing every hour and a half all the way across. That’s a lot of shifting kit.

Love the pictures comng from this years race.

Sums it up for me…

Brilliant photo!

Is that £20M excluding the cost of the boat? I’d have thought these boats cost many times more than that.

I can’t find a source, but IIRC late 90’s Open60’s (Kingfisher, Ecover2 etc) were costing in the region of £1.5million. So if these are built to a one design spec they should work out cheaper (only one design group to pay, one mould to make, one set of rig and sails developed, etc). So £20million to cover buying a boat, a 2nd older boat for training, shore teams, logistics etc sounds about right.

Euro95,000, fancy putting together an STW syndicate team?
http://www.apolloduck.eu/feature.phtml?id=390898

The reason that they don’t just go down south and circle the Antarctic like the other RTW races is that they need to stop off at sponsoring places like Abu Dhabi and Sanja. These places pay for the race.

Gutting to see DongFeng de-mast. couldnt have happened in a worse place or at a worse time… middle of the night, off Cape Horn.

Crew are all safe though.