VOR Leg 2: Charlie Enright (USA) & Co. on Vestas 11th Hour Racing holding slim lead as the breez
EN ROUTE TO CAPE TOWN – The Volvo Ocean Race's front page leaderboard shows Vestas still on a roll, as their navigator Simon "SciFi" Fisher (GBR) appears to be doing a good job of keeping the team in the most breeze as it moderates Wednesday afternoon into the high teens after the 30-knot conditions and big seas the seven-boast fleet has been surviving in since Sunday's start at Lisbon. But there is little in it, at least among the top four boats as of the 1300 UTC (0500 PDT) update of the race tracker....
Until the final 24 hours of each leg the tracker is updated every six hours when it then goes live into the finish.
No word on why Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag has done so poorly over the last 24 hours, not even in Peter Rusch's daily update article.
Most race experts will not be surprised by the leaderboard. The four most experienced teams – Vestas, Dongfeng, MAPFRE and AkzoNobel – are picking the shifts, doing a better job of staying in the most breeze, and sailing the boats the hardest and fastest. You can see that in the raw data in this screen grab taken from today's VOR Facebook Live Daily Update show....
Vestas 11th Hour Racing have had an excellent 24 hours, covering 15 miles more than MAPFRE and almost 40 miles more than last-place Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag. "TWS Avg 24h" means the average True Wind Speed experienced by the yacht over the last 24 hours.
Last night at the World Sailing annual conference being held this week in Puerto Vallarta, MEX, Peter Burling (NZL) was named Rolex World Sailor of the Year. Burling, of course, helmed Emirates Team New Zealand to victory over ORACLE TEAM USA in the 2017 America's Cup at Bermuda in June. Burling is racing on Team Brunel, and was told of his win early this (Wednesday) morning by his teammates....
Congrats to Pete Burling, racing aboard Team Brunel in the VOR, and to Marit Bouwmeester (NED), the 2017 Laser Radial world champion who was named women's sailor of the year. Burling also won the award with his Olympic gold-medal teammate Blair Tuke (now racing on MAPFRE) in 2012. Burling joins Russell Coutts as the only Kiwi to win the prestigious award twice. More in Duncan Johnstone's story on the stuff.co.nz website here.