It was predicted and will probably hurt the front runners. On leg 1, the fleet of seven boats at the start of the Volvo Ocean Race is now sailing towards compression and a possible "restart" after spectacular days of sailing: an extremely low-wind zone is blocking the Kus in the direction of Porto Santo. How desperately the teams are trying to escape the doldrums can be seen in the Tracker on the courses plotted by the individual boats. On Tuesday afternoon, around two days after the start, the Spanish team Mapfre in third place in the intermediate classification had positioned itself furthest north. Further south, permanent leader Vestas 11th Hour Racing still led the field ahead of the Dutch team AkzoNobel. At times, the "Vestas" crew had been able to extend their lead to 27 nautical miles. Now, however, it is beginning to melt away.
The Volvo Ocean Race organisers surprised fans with this live broadcast on Monday, serving up spectacular images from the air. The formidable sailing conditions have now given way to a brilliant lull on the way to Porto Santo
The red lantern of the tail light continued to hang in the stern of Bouwe Bekking's "Brunel" 840 nautical miles before the finish. In the meantime, the crew had even sent a diver into the water to investigate the cause of their boat's lack of speed. After impressive top speeds of more than 20 knots, the speed figures of almost all boats dropped to between 0.7 and 5.2 knots on Tuesday afternoon. Only Team Mapfre, positioned above the competition, was still travelling at 8 knots towards Madeira and Porto Santo, after the passage of which the fleet will head for the destination port of Lisbon.
"Mapfre" navigator Juan Vila, who had described the conditions overnight as "tough in winds of up to 35 knots", said: "Anything can still happen on this leg." The wind hole between the fleet and Porto Santo stretches some 100 nautical miles across and is therefore difficult to circumnavigate, even with radical manoeuvres. Boat Captain Liz Wardley from the rear third of the fleet had already reported on Dee Caffari's Turn the Tide on Plastic on Tuesday morning: "It was a hairy affair last night. In the end, we kept ahead of the wind through the Strait of Gibraltar to avoid the traffic separation scheme. But we got through there in the middle of the fleet quite decently. Now the breeze is slowly dying away. In a few hours we'll probably only have five or six knots of wind. Compared to the guys around us, we look pretty good in terms of speed." The new motto on leg 1: less speed, more stress.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
