HEADING north is the order of the day for the yachts in the Volvo Ocean Race fleet as the jostling for positions continues in earnest.
Racing is keen amongst the fleet as the Irish yachts of Team Delta Lloyd and Green Dragon continue to do battle as they clock off the miles in leg four that has them bound for Qingdao in China.
Positioned as the most westerly boat of the seven remaining yachts, Delta Lloyd, clawed back an overnight six mile gap between them and Green Dragon to lead skipper Ian Walker and his crew by over eight miles at the first report this morning.
The tactical manoeuvres of new navigator Frits Koek and skipper Roberto Bermudez onboard the Ger O’Rourke lead campaign has now positioned Team Delta Lloyd in fifth, ahead of their fellow Irish entry and overall race leader Ericsson 4 skippered by Olympian Torben Grael and very much in the shake up of leg four.
A gap of just 16 miles keeps Delta Lloyd astern of Puma Ocean Racing on the distance to the finish, but their westerly position would suggest a more favourable standing on the race course.
The procession that kept the boats heading northwest for the early stages of the leg has somewhat dissolved as they now plot courses to maximise the conditions, sea state and freezing chill that lies north of Borneo.
DELTA LLOYD LEG FOUR DAY 4 QFB: received 21.01.09 0958 GMT
Hi all,
The first manoeuvres have been taken place today: three tacks! Getting closer to the coast of Malaysia/Brunei, it gave us the impression that near the shore the conditions were less favourable. On one side, the shallows didn’t look friendly and we expected the wind to be less and more NE along the shore.
We tacked in a dark, squally night and moved towards more offshore regions. We had to tack twice more to manoeuvre into a safe position – referring to the many shallow places around here – and into a stronger breeze. At this moment, we are experiencing some decreasing wind speeds, but still more than 10 knots. Our wind will arrive shortly… Even more in a couple of days.
Being new onboard such a racer, I’m trying to get into the rhythm of the daily routines. Having said that, with the parts that don’t work properly in the nav-station and a limping satellite system (not our fault) I have to work with, I spend a lot of time in the nav station.
In between every three-hour report, I try to ‘sleep’ – what a NOISY boats these are – and eat and drink sufficiently. Food is not gourmet, but all right. Unfortunately a series of rotten freeze-dried food was packed, so we have to be careful with our choices and rations.
For now, we are looking ahead to a relative quiet night with NE’ly winds around 15 knots.
Cheers,
Frits Koek – navigator
