Franck Cammas’ Groupama sailing team gathered speed at last on Tuesday as they closed in on a third-place finish in Leg 1 of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12.
Having finally picked up fresh breeze early this morning, the French boat was making good progress towards the finish line in Cape Town, South Africa with an expected arrival time of 1615 UTC.
Having chosen a bold southerly track early in the 6,500 nautical mile first leg which started in Alicante, Spain on November 5, Cammas’ crew headed the fleet for several days, until light winds on their approach to the Equator handed the advantage to the boats further west.
A slow crossing of the windless area known as the Doldrums then further compounded their problems and dropped Groupama to fourth, several hundred miles behind the rest of the field.
Ironically, after spending several hours becalmed last night, the arrival of fresh breeze meant that Cammas and his crew had to rein back their Volvo Open 70 on the final run in to Cape Town.
Watch captain Damian Foxall described the jarring conditions the crew were enduring: “It’s pretty brutal on board,” he said. “We’re bouncing along now so we’re actually trying to slow the boat down to avoid unnecessary risks.”
Having finished the leg first at 1914 UTC on Saturday, after more than 21 days at sea, Iker Martínez’s Team Telefónica top the leaderboard with 31 points.
Chris Nicholson’s CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand finished at 1148 UTC on Sunday, putting them in second overall on 29 points.
Assuming they come in unscathed today, Groupama will have a total of 22 points and lie in third place overall.
The three boats who had to retire form the leg – Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, PUMA and Team Sanya – score no points for this leg, leaving them on 6 points, 5 and 3 respectively.
Sanya and Abu Dhabi are both awaiting the arrival of their boats by separate ships tomorrow in Cape Town and are targeting December 7 to be ready to sail again.
PUMA are holed up at the remote island of Tristan da Cunha and are awaiting the arrival of a ship to take them to Cape Town, with an ETA of December 6.
Leg 1 Report: 29/11/2011 14:01:50 UTC
DTL DTLC BS DTF
1 TELE Finished: 021d 05h 14m 25s
2 CAMP Finished: 021d 21h 48m 04s
3 GPMA 0.00 0.0 20 40.1
– ADOR Retired from Leg 1
– PUMA Retired from Leg 1
– SNYA Retired from Leg 1