Fotogalerie
February 3, 2012 - 2200 UTC Leg 3 Stage 2 Day 13
HIGH-SPEED CHASE TOWARDS SANYA FINISH
Leg 3 Report: 03/02/2012 22:03:17 UTC
&xnbsp; DTL DTLC BS DTF
1 TELE 0.00 0 15.8 91.2 2 GPMA 30.20 3 14.7 121.4 3 CMPR 59.90 5 14.2 151.1 4 PUMA 73.90 1 16.3 165.1 5 ADOR 88.60 10 12.3 179.8 6 SNYA 295.30 44 10.7 386.5
At 2200 UTC tonight, the first four boats racing in Leg 3 Stage 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race were screaming towards the Sanya finish in a high-speed chase led by Team Telefónica (Iker Martínez/ESP). Groupama sailing team were holding on to second place, 30.20 nautical miles (nm) behind.
After an exhausting 13 days at sea, Team Telefónica is on the home straight with 91.2 nm left to run until the team crosses the finish in Sanya in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Groupama sailing team (Franck Cammas/FRA), in second place, are 30 nm behind, averaging a speed of 14.7 knots, nearly a knot slower than the leaders. CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand still keeps third place, 59.9 nm behind, but second place is probably beyond the team’s grasp now.
Slightly to the east of the fleet, and with sheets cracked, PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG (Ken Read/USA) have tonight swept past Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (Ian Walker/GBR), the most inshore of the fleet. Read and his men are sailing faster than anyone, averaging 16.1 knots, while Abu Dhabi drops 10 nm and one place to fifth position, 88.6 nm behind the leader.
The first four boats are expected to finish sometime after 0430 UTC (1230 local time) on Saturday.
Team Sanya (Mike Sanderson/NZL) has left the coast of Vietnam and has begun to position themselves for the final stretch to the finish, 295 nm ahead. Yesterday the team noticed that one of the top batten cars had broken. The indexsail was dropped briefly and two crew wearing harnesses were hoisted aloft to fix the damage. They replaced the car on the track in less than two minutes as the boat continued to dive off massive waves, after which the indexsail was successfully re-hoisted and a gorgeous sunset lit up the deck.
The team is expected to finish Leg 3 on Sunday around 1300 UTC (2100 local time).
February 3, 2012 - 1000 UTC Leg 3 Stage 2 Day 13
TELEFÓNICA LEADS IN FINAL SHOWDOWN
Leg 3 Report: 03/02/2012 10:01:20 UTC
&xnbsp; DTL DTLC BS DTF
1 TELE 0.00 0 12.8 274.2 2 GPMA 27.00 8 13.3 301.3 3 CMPR 46.30 8 13 320.5 4 ADOR 58.60 4 12.4 332.8 5 PUMA 74.50 26 11.3 348.7 6 SNYA 159.50 8 11.7 433.7
At 1000 UTC today, Telefónica (Iker Martínez/ESP) led Groupama 4 (Franck Cammas/FRA) by 27 nautical miles (nm) in the final showdown of Leg 3 to Sanya. Both boats tacked shortly before 0900 UTC and are still upwind but on the layline for the finish, 274 nm ahead. Soon, as the wind shifts to the right, they will have fast reaching conditions ideally suited to both boats.Although possible, it is unlikely that Groupama 4 will catch the leaders now unless the crew of Telefónica crew make a significant mistake or suffer gear damage. To gain 27 miles in 24 hours Groupama would need average around 1.5 knots faster from for the entire period. Overnight the French crew had a scare when, with a loud bang, the indexsheet parted while fully loaded. No one was hurt and 10 minutes later, the repair was complete, but precious miles had been lost.
The index battle, playing out 46 nm further back, is between CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand (Chris Nicholson/AUS), Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (Ian Walker/GBR) and PUMA’s Mar Mostro (Ken Read/USA). Although CAMPER currently hold third place, the boat’s reaching performance has not been sparkling in the past and both Walker and Read are hungry for a place on the podium.Now out in the open sea, it was an immense relief for CAMPER’s navigator Will Oxley to tack away from the Vietnamese coast for the final time last night. “With poor quality charting, multitudes of unlit fishing vessels and miles of nets, not to mention shallow wrecks from the war, the potential for disaster was high,” he said.Abu Dhabi nearly came to grief last night when they narrowly avoided large steel, unlit and uncharted pillar buoy. Missing it by just a metre, Walker said it didn’t bear thinking about the damage it could have caused to the boat.
“I guess a miss is as big as a mile, but this incident served to remind us of some of the unknown risks that lie out here,” he said.Team Sanya (Mike Sanderson/NZL) in sixth, still has this to face, as well as an area of wind averaging 28-30 knots. They will be expecting to make around 15 tacks over the next 24 hours in order to keep close in to the coast and avoid the worst of the sea state.Across the entire six-boat fleet, the crews are red-eyed and exhausted from the constant tacking and restacking of gear, sleep deprivation and lack of food. The standby watch sleep with one eye open, fully clothed and ready for the call to action as soon as a sail change or manoeuvre is required.The leading boats are expected to arrive in Sanya around mid morning local time (UTC+8). For the six teams, this leg can’t end soon enough. &xnbsp; &xnbsp;
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