Volvo Ocean Race Leg 3 - Day 23
by Dongfeng Race Team 20 Jan 2015 11:03 GMT
20 January 2015
"Nightmare" 24 hours for Dongfeng as the dice rolls against the Chinese team and 100 mile lead melts away to nothing
- Leg 3: Abu Dhabi to Sanya (4,670 nautical miles)
- Days at sea: 17
- Distance to finish: 1385 nautical miles
- Position in fleet: Still in the lead but almost too painful to watch as 36 hours after entering the Strait of Malacca Dongfeng lost more than 70nm to the rest of the fleet. Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing now just 25.9nm behind.
From Sam...
"Nightmare. A Nightmare" Not many words from Charles Caudrelier, Dongfeng's skipper, at the moment, but those do sum it all up.
"No wind, and the current against us. Our boat speed to the goal, zero. So it's nightmare for a leader, and maybe we're not a leader anymore.
"So we hit a wall where the wind refused to play.
"Then we lost 70-something miles to the fleet."
[And since its actually become 85+ lost]
Read his full blog here
From the team...
No fan of Dongfeng Race Team could have slept well, or enjoyed much, these past 24 hours – the cruelest fate of all for our determined men on Dongfeng – a pure roll of the dice in the madness of the Malacca Straits has seen their hard earned 100+ mile lead melt away to virtually nothing. And still it goes on, even after some wind a few hours ago that hinted the end of the worst part was over, the next report showed they had been once again swallowed. And all the time they've been pinned down by windless zones and adverse currents, the chasing peloton have been barely touched, just a few hours becalmed – and are now in biting distance. It remains to be seen if Dongfeng's luck will change, maybe they can still manage to escape the zone in to better breeze before the other teams. We think our boys deserve a bit more luck after how hard they fought and how well they have sailed to create that lead in the first place since leaving the Gulf. There is still a chance they can touch the easterly wind first and come away with a lead to defend on long upwind leg to Sanya – albeit a lead massively reduced from the one they entered the madness of Malacca with. The mental strength to endure these past 24 hours onboard is incredible, but the tension onboard palpable as Sam describes in his great blog today – credit to the team for that – its hard enough for all of us on land...
The forecasts all suggest that once the fleet escape this part of the Straits, they could have stronger north easterly winds to carry them down the narrowest part to Singapore. But as we've seen, the madness of Malacca can throw just about any boat it wants. Lets just hope its someone else's turn next to feel its wrath, and that Dongfeng will have just a little sprinkling of good luck tonight and make it to Singapore with some kind of reasonable position in the fleet intact. Then it will be time to start the final phase of leg 3 battle, perhaps from zero or worse all over again!
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