Sailing can also be exciting in calm zones. And how! This is demonstrated by the constantly changing intermediate scores on the sixth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. On course from Hong Kong to Auckland, the six boats have reached the squid belt. Their days and nights are characterised by extreme highs and lows. One minute at the front, the next suddenly at the back - this is what happened to David Witt's team Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag, for example. Initially celebrated together with AkzoNobel for a bold strategic positioning that led both boats to the front, only the Dutch team has been able to hold its own in the leading group so far. Witt's team, on the other hand, suddenly found themselves in sixth and last place on Friday morning, having fallen almost 50 nautical miles behind the new leaders overnight in the nerve-wracking doldrums poker game on the equator. Bouwe Bekking's Team Brunel led the field on the tenth day of the 6,100 nautical mile Pacific leg ahead of AkzoNobel (1.4 nautical miles behind) and Dee Caffari's Team Turn the Tide on Plastic (8.8 nautical miles behind). Dongfeng Race Team and the Spanish team Mapfre, which leads the overall standings, followed more than 30 nautical miles behind.
To the north-east of Papua New Guinea, navigators are agonising around the clock to find the fastest route from the Philippine Sea through the dreaded squid belt into the south-western Pacific. In recent days, some teams have lost up to 25 or 30 nautical miles between two position reports. Every result report is therefore eagerly awaited on board the boats. While Brunel had managed to make up seven nautical miles in the previous six hours on Friday morning, Dongfeng and Mapfre lost a good seven and almost ten nautical miles respectively while searching for wind on an easterly course. Mapfre did this in just one hour under a single large black cloud. The zigzag courses of the boats around the equator depicted in the tracker show the crews' search for wind. The colourful lines look more like a traced ice-skating freestyle than a fast and straight approach to the destination port of Auckland.
Brunel skipper Bouwe Bekking already described what the rollercoaster ride through the results list feels like on Thursday, when his team was still chasing the field at the back of the field: "We're experiencing a lot of downpours. One of them hit us hard. Within six hours, we lost all the miles we had worked so hard for. You hope that the other boats will experience similar situations. But no, we lost 14 miles in six hours. Ouch!" In the meantime, the tide has turned in Brunel's favour and the Dutch are back in the lead. But in the coming days, every new intermediate result will provide new surprises. The battle for this stage victory remains exciting.
Listening again to what the skippers said before the start of the leg. They were already dreading the current doldrums...
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
