Blog from the boat on August 7 at 1900 BST.
Finally, after 20 hours of being close together, the Volvo Ocean 65’s have now separated depending on their tacking strategy to go upwind. We are now on our way to Ireland and towards the Fastnet rock which we should see at the first light of dawn (current ETA 0830 UTC). Vestas-11th Hour Racing and Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag are still visible downwind. Akzo Nobel are upwind of Dongfeng with a slight advantage over us. Looking forward to getting to the Fastnet rock, with Carolijn hoping she will finally get to see it in daylight after normally crossing by night in light winds.
Blog from the boat on August, 7 at 07.00 BST.
Update from the boat as they work their way towards the next headland, The Lizard, where they will tack and start aiming for Land’s End.
The wind has dropped to 10 knots and the boats are now averaging 9 knots and working harder to trim the sails. Dongfeng Race Team is still in the lead, MAPRE 100 metres downwind. Akzo Nobel can clearly be seen approximately 500 metres away.
Update from Pascal at 7am: Akzo Nobel is first because they did a tack at the right time and got ahead of us, 1 mile ahead. MAPFRE 0.7 miles behind.
Blog from the boat on August, 6 at 22.30 BST.
It was a textbook start for Dongfeng Race Team which put them in the leading pack together with MAPFRE. There was 20 knots of wind and sunny skies up until sunset, guaranteeing an interesting upwind race with many tacks.
At 21.00 Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE are very close to each other with a slight advantage for Dongfeng upwind. As the night settles down, the wind is now dropping to an average of 14 knots and is set to drop even more in the morning according to Charles Caudrelier.
It is 22.30 and all sailors are up on deck. It has been like this for an hour now as they try to level up with MAPFRE. The tension is slowly building when losing speed on MAPFRE after what seemed to be a pretty relaxed start.
Pascal reckons the rest of the fleet is out of danger FOR NOW, apart from MAPFRE who are basically on our tail.
