Twelve hours into the race and after their first night at sea, Charles Caudrelier’s team is blasting towards Europe in strong southwesterly winds with a margin of just over five miles over MAPFRE in second with Team Brunel another couple of miles back in third.
Boatspeeds are close to 20 knots and the crews have been thrown straight back into heavy weather racing with tons of water cascading over the bow as they work hard to maintain their pace. Down below the navigators are watching their rivals on AIS, constantly comparing performance at the start of this eight-day sprint to Cardiff.
So far the boats have all managed to ride on the strong winds of the first depression, but it looks as though they will fall off the back of it in the coming hours and speeds will fall away as the first tricky section of this critical, double-points leg unfolds.
Leg 9 position report at1231UTC:
1. Dongfeng Race Team. DTF: 2,647.1nm
2. MAPFRE. DTL: 13.0nm
3. Team Brunel. DTL: 23.4nm
4. Turn the Tide on Plastic. DTL: 29.1nm
5. Team AkzoNobel. DTL: 36.0nm
6. Vestas 11th Hour Racing. DTL: 36.7nm
7. Team Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag. DTL: 38.1nm.
