First calm, then power play. The fifth leg challenges its challengers in the Ocean Race Europe with strongly changing conditions. Team Malizia has mastered them well so far. Staying focussed in the flat conditions of the first 48 hours and foregoing solo runs, Boris Herrmann, Will Harris, Francesca Clapcich and Cole Brauer then put the pedal to the metal with the freshening winds. Click here for tracking.
Ocean Race Europe: "Malizia" takes the stage lead
Malizia - Seaexplorer" took the lead for the first time in the late afternoon of 9 September. On their course to the waymark north of Palermo, the boats were travelling at speeds of up to 30 knots and sometimes even more. The Malizians got a lot out of the power play, in which Ambrogio Beccaria's "Allagrand Mapei" in particular put up resistance in the end.
On Wednesday morning, the Malizians continued their duel with the Azzurri, with "Malizia - Seaexplorer" travelling the furthest north from the mooring line to the Palermo waypoint. At around 9.30 a.m., the four-way battle to reach the waypoint as quickly as possible was in full swing. "Paprec Arkéa" and "Biotherm" followed a little further south, a good handful of nautical miles behind. At the same time, "Biotherm" and "Paprec Arkéa" sailed closer to the mooring line to the waymark, which is positioned roughly on the longitude of Palermo.
Once the mark has been rounded, the teams head back and round the south of Sicily on course for the Adriatic. This morning, the leading crews still had around 925 nautical miles to go to Boka Bay, the finishing harbour of the Ocean Race Europe. The quartet of "Malizia - Seaexplorer", "Allagrande Mapei", "Paprec Arkéa" and "Biotherm" had clearly pulled away from their pursuers. Click here for the intermediate results of the Ocean Race Europe.
"Holcim-PRB" has fallen far behind
Team Holcim-PRB, trailing Team Malizia by around 150 nautical miles on Wednesday morning, continued to pay for falling slightly behind in the tussle for position near Saint-Tropez and then losing more miles on the "inside lane" while the others galloped out further west and then galloped off to the south in the early hours of 9 September.
The day before, "Holcim-PRB" skipper Rosalin Kuiper had already said: "It's nice to be fast again - we're travelling at 27 knots - but the fleet is way ahead. So we have a lot of catching up to do. We will work hard to do that. I wish we were ahead, but it is what it is. We'll try to stay positive and off we go."
"Allagrande Mapei" skipper Ambrogio Beccaria reported from a much more comfortable position just how good the game felt after the doldrums battle in more wind: "It's simply better with a bit of wind. The miles are finally starting to tumble. We can finally enjoy the downwind sailing. But it won't last long. It will be stormy, windless, rough - definitely complicated."
Ocean Race Europe: Storms in the Tyrrhenian Sea
Corentin Horeau on "Paprec Arkéa" felt the same way on Wednesday morning. The man who skipper Yoann Richomme had so wonderfully presented as the "next Vendée Globe winner" at the team presentation on stage in the Ocean Live Park on the Kiellinie in Kiel's starting harbour warned: "We will continue to have storms. And a very uncertain situation. At least until tonight, maybe even until Thursday morning."
The motto is clear: hold on and push as hard as you can." Corentin Horeau
