Daryl Wislang at the helm of Telefonica Blue, on leg 6 of the Volvo Ocean Race, from Rio de Janeiro to Boston. Image copyright Gabriele Olivo/Telefonica Blue/Volvo Ocean Race.
by Bouwe Bekking (skipper)
Can’t sleep, so will write few lines and to let you all know how we are doing.
Still in the lead, but the conditions are very tricky, and I know everything can happen. Strangely enough we are in the same position as in the previous race, where the same boat is chasing us. Then we knew we had a bit on, as the ABN boat was more than 1.5 knots faster on a close reach. We beat them by only two or three minutes to the scoring gate.
At least that is not the case anymore. When we have similar pressure we should be able to hold off Delta Lloyd, but as said big losses/gains can be made very easily, so it not over until we are there and we cannot relax a single minute.
All the boats are still in striking distance and an upset can easy happen in this part of the world. Is it fair that we get the same amount of points as the for example the 6.4 mile inshore race in Rio. I guess so, as that is the rule. But I hope the organisation will review this for the next edition. The in-port races are great for the stopover organisers and the sponsors, but I would like to see only points for the first three boats. The winner of the days gets 1.75 points, 2nd place 1 point and 3rd place 0.5 points. The rest of the fleet don’t get any points. I think this concept shows that this is an offshore race, and easy to understand for the public. They an even understand that the winner gets a very small bonus of .25 points for their great form of the day.
So all well here, everybody gets a nice tan, but as Xabi (Xabier Fernandez) noted Sifi (Simon Fisher) starts looking like a real ‘pom’. Red face, and a white upper body, with red arms. I think he got the message; tomorrow his shirt will be off, so he gets a more even colour.
Volvo Ocean Race
No comments:
Post a Comment