All Change
It’s been a up and down day in the Volvo Ocean Race, starting with Telefonica Blue getting up into second place and Puma dropping back to fourth and ending with those positions reversed!
The only things that haven’t really changed are that Green Dragon is still the back marker, albeit a lot closer, and Puma and Ericsson 3 are still glued together. Ken Read describes it well “Literally, we are in a race with them which couldn’t be closer. I have won, or lost, by larger margins on 12 mile windward leeward at Key West Race Week. They get us a bit, we get them a bit. Bottom line, we are glued to each other.”
“As for general strategy, we have a pretty large island called Fiji smack in the way. A bit of precarious weather around the island will make for a huge gain or loss depending if you guess right for the short or long term. Capey has been racking his brain overtime trying to figure this one out. As always, I sit there and throw as many questions at him possible to try and get all options on the table. We shall see how this one settles out. Besides that, life is pretty calm on the yacht, 12 knot winds, hard on the wind on port tack makes for painfully slow mileage but that is what we have in the ‘upwind around the world race’. Hopefully the wind gods smile on us soon and free us up, but it doesn’t look like that will happen for a while. Until then, it is back to hand to hand battle with E3.” Pic from Rick Deppe and more VOR pix here.
