Well, that's a way of saying because if the Spanish boat has mostly a Spanish crew the Chinese boat has only a Chinese on the crew, being the others mostly French. Anyway it seems that I got it right before the beginning saying that this edition would be dominated by the Chinese and the Spanish team.
DongFeng after leading most of the 2nd leg was beaten by Mapfre that had been 2nd on the first leg. Only the bad Dongfeng result on the first short leg (where it was 3rd) and the weird way this year the classification is attributed explains why Dongfeng is 3rd, even if it has been the boat that led the race for more time.
Regarding the classification it seems to me that in port races not having any weight at all on the classification makes no sense as it makes no sense that extra point attributed to the winner of a leg, or even worse, the Newport to Cardiff leg to score double points. It would make sense the longer legs to be awarded more points and the shorter ones less, but Newport to Cardiff is way shorter than Lisboa to Cape Town so why the first has double points and the last single ones? And why the very short leg between Alicante and Lisboa has the same points as much longer legs like Lisboa to Cape Town? What is the logic of all this in what regards racing performance and sport achievement?
Dongfeng is leading again and it has one more French solo sailor on the crew, Fabien Delahaye, a Figaro and 40class champion that substitutes Daryl Wislang. I don't think they will be slower with the change. Now the Chinese boat has five French sailors out of nine...and one Chinese. The Spanish boat, Mapfre has also 5 Spanish sailors, among them the Skipper. I hope they change the rules regarding this because it makes no sense at all, I mean, the nationality of the boats and the nationality of the crews. Vestas, the Danish boat that is on 2nd place overall ( 5th on this leg), has also a single Dane on the crew while the two Dutch boats have on Brunel two and on AksoNobel just one Dutch!!!
All of you that are interested on the race pay attention to what is going to happen on the next days: they are going to be hit by a huge storm, so huge and fast that they cannot outrun it, not even with those very fast boats. I guess they will get 60k gusts and sustained winds well over 40k. Interesting for us, not nice for them, specially on those boats where contrary to IMOCAS they have to be outside with a lousy cockpit protection.
ReplyDeleteLove your blogs Paulo, visiting daily. Small thing: Team Vestas is Danish, not Dutch (also not a single Dane on the boat however). Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeletethanks, nice to know,:-)
DeleteSorry about that, you are right I was confusing it with one of the two Dutch boats, Brunel that has two Dutch and AksoNobel that has one.
By the way they give for this leg a Dane on Vestas, a women, Jena Hansen, an Olympic champion on dinghy classes. She probably does not know much about sailing 60fters fully crewed on oceanic conditions but she is young and may well become a great sailor on bigger yachts.
http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/news/10522_Crew-Lists-Leg-3-Cape-Town-to-Melbourne.html
Danish is not Dutch, the Dutch boats have minimal one Dutchy onboard. Vestas is American manned.
ReplyDelete"In a bold break from the rest of the fleet, British skipper Dee Caffari opted to take her young Turn the Tide on Plastic crew furthest to the north in the hope of dodging the worst of the system’s howling winds and forecast for enormous seas.
ReplyDeleteThis is in contrast to the strategies of leg leader Dongfeng Race Team, MAPFRE, team Akzonobel, Team Brunel and Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag, who have chosen to roll the dice and take the southern option."
https://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/tracker.html
The sort is coming faster than what I thought. They will be on the center of it in about 12 hours and will stay in the storm for many ours. That's now that the best sailors have a chance to go away. I hope they don't break anything.
The storm did not catch them yet and there are already boats sailing with 35k winds!!!