It is an extremely close leg. The five men's teams are in a neck-and-neck race, with only Team SCA trailing slightly, albeit marginally, just seven nautical miles behind the leading Team Abu Dhabi.
The boats have passed the southern points of the ice boundary, a no-go zone designed to protect against collisions with icebergs. This forced the fleet onto a southerly course directly on the shortest route. But there is more wind to the north, and that is where everyone has turned to, along a new ice boundary. It is a pure speed race, since reaching the ice edge without any tactical challenges, simply along a line.
Things were much more turbulent beforehand. Every team except Alvimedica had been in the lead at least once, Team Brunel even by more than 25 nautical miles because they were able to sail around a calm zone. But in the end, they all managed to close the gap again.
The summary of the fourth race day
Abu Dhabi's current lead is mainly due to the fact that the overall leader is the furthest south and therefore closest to the shortest course to Lisbon. Their toughest opponents, Team Dongfeng - the only ones who could still pose a serious threat to Abu Dhabi in the overall standings - are sailing furthest north, with a transverse distance of around three nautical miles.
This appears to be the first time that Abu Dhabi skipper Ian Walker has deviated somewhat from his previous tactical route - because he has obviously been keeping a close eye on Dongfeng up to now. If you accelerate the race tracker from the start, you can see that Abu Dhabi is always close to Dongfeng.
The tactics are clear. Dongfeng must try to put as many boats as possible between itself and Dongfeng in order to close the six-point gap. Abu Dhabi wants to do the opposite: stay as close as possible to Dongfeng and thus keep the points cushion high, so it almost doesn't matter what the fleet does. An interesting game of cat and mouse.
"We're not trying to win this stage," confirms Abu Dhabi team reporter Matt Knighton. "We're trying to win the race, and that means covering Dongfeng. Ian's strategy in this race has always been to be at least in the top three on every leg, like in an Olympic regatta, that would put us in a sort of position at the end of the race for the final attack for gold. That attack is happening now."
"It's like playing basketball one-on-one, but on a playing field of 2,000 nautical miles. If we could finish just one place behind Dongfeng, whether ahead or behind them, we'd be that much closer to our goal. If we could even put a couple of boats between us, that would be the icing on the cake."
Lars Bolle
Chief Editor Digital
