The fleet was underway for a day and just under an hour on Monday evening when Team Brunel was in the lead, fighting to keep the two red boats from Dongfeng and Mapfre positioned close behind in check. As at the start, the teams continued to struggle with agonizingly light summer winds after passing Fastnet Rock. At around 6 p.m. Brunel's yellow boat had only made barely a knot of boat speed, while Dongfeng was making a little more speed behind. The three top teams were not a nautical mile apart. Also in visual contact and with changing positions, Vestas 11th Hour, Team AkzoNobel and Dee Caffari's Team Turn the Tide on Plastic sailed within one nautical mile to the leader Brunel.
Relaxed summer sailing fun for the teams in the Volvo Ocean Race. Stage 10 started in slow motion
The intermediate results from Monday evening, around 6 p.m. The positions of the yachts change quickly in the doldrums …
At the "happy hour" at Fastnet Rock, as Dongfeng's helmsman and trimmer Carolijn Brouwer cheerfully described it, her team was still leading the fleet. All the boats had arrived there almost simultaneously. Only David Witt's crew Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag had already caught a deficit of almost 50, in the meantime even up to 80 nautical miles, because they had missed a "tide gate" and had to anchor last night. In the meantime, the "Scallywags" were enjoying at least 13 knots of speed while catching up, while the rivals that had hurried away all crawled around Ireland's southwestern tip.
Thoughtful faces on board Vestas 11th Hour Racing. The slack is a headache for the navigators in particular
At the height of the infamous Fastnet Rock, which has so often given sailors rough conditions, Brunel's on-board reporter Sam Greenfield wrote: "Fastnet Rock is in sight. Like the rest of the fleet (apart from Scally). 6 Knots TWS and 6.5 knots boat speed. The Irish coastline is beautiful! Early in the morning today with 'Gitana' the foiling 100-footer paid us a visit. If Yann and Thomas (former Brunel crew members) were on board, then greetings from the team! " An hour earlier, Bouwe Bekking had sent his first lines on this stage: "We can see Ireland now, and the wind is decreasing. The boats behind us will catch up. Like us on Dongfeng."
Fastnet parade: As if they had made an appointment and weren't fighting for every meter, the fleet sails towards the famous rock
The prelude to the 10th stage provides navigators like Team Brunel's Andrew Cape here with plenty of food to ponder
The latter prophecy came true a little later: Brunel took over the leadership from Dongfeng, but is now being harassed from behind again. The positions change constantly in the dull conditions. That will only change when the pressure increases again.
Several teams always have men or women in the mast in the very light winds. There they keep an eye out for wind and competition
"This stage is complicated," explained "Turn the Tide on Plastic" skipper Dee Caffari, "a lot of land on both sides, lots of tide gates, plus a few oil rigs and wind farms. The navigators are faced with exhausting times. In particular, the whole of us Time to have visual contact with the rest of the fleet. There is plenty going on."
Here you can find the tracker and the intermediate results
That was how it started on Sunday. The fleet has now passed Fastnet Rock