After struggling with storm clouds, heavy rain showers and lulls, the teams in the Volvo Ocean Race now have to fight a vegetable opponent on the ninth day of the eighth stage: the seaweed in the Sargasso Sea. The Sargassum or golf rod called brown alga makes life difficult for sailors. Again and again she gets stuck on keels and oars. Sometimes all that helps is a total stop of the boat and engaging reverse gear to get rid of the unpopular "brakes". The seven crews have only one wish in common: to reach the trade winds as quickly as possible after the Doldrums Passage and to chase away on a northbound course to Newport. The leading boats are currently experiencing a doubling of wind speeds within 24 hours.
Team Brunel's navigator Andrew Cape gets an overview of the situation on deck
Brunel was the first boat to accelerate. "It's official! We have reached the trade winds, and the water is flying over the deck again," reported Team Brunel's on-board reporter Sam Greenfield early on Tuesday morning. "We are experiencing boat speeds of 15 to 20 knots in winds of 15 to 17 knots." The news of the relapsed Dutch team AkzoNobel sounded a bit more frustrated, which, despite its gift of rum to Neptune, got stuck in a dull field for hours at the Equator Passage. On-board reporter Brian Carlin wrote, "Chris (Nicholson, Ed.) Thinks we should have had more rum and our offering may not have been generous enough."
The seaweed has to go! This is how the crews fight the unpleasant companions that can be seen on the lower part of the keel
AkzoNobel's watchman and helmsman Nicolai Sehested is fighting the seaweed
Overnight, Bouwe Bekkings Brunel took command in front of Dee Caffari's team Turn the Tide on Plastic, Dongfeng and Vestas (34 nautical miles behind). The yellow boat had gained a lead of more than ten nautical miles on Tuesday morning, benefiting from the fact that other boats had partially "parked" in slack conditions or obstructed by seaweed. Now the Dutch have reached the trade winds first, while Mapfre (65 nautical miles behind), AkzoNobel and David Witt's team Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag (141 nautical miles behind) are fighting to catch up in the rear places 5, 6 and 7. Their distance to the leading boats, however, is likely to increase as they reach the trade winds in the near future.
Here you can find the tracker and the intermediate results.
Charles Caudrelier's Dongfeng Race Team was second on Tuesday morning behind Bouwe Bekking's Team Brunel
She defended her place in the top three on Tuesday morning: turn-the-tide-on-plastic skipper Dee Caffari
The intermediate results from the morning of May 1st: Bouwe Bekking's Team Brunel has taken the lead and rushes towards the trade winds, which - colored red - are easy to see