Seven days into The Ocean Race Atlantic, the front of the fleet has become a genuine scrap. Four boats, four nautical miles, one high pressure system standing between them and Lorient.
Kojiro Shiraishi's DMG MORI Global One (JPN) still held the narrowest of leads on Tuesday morning, with Paul Meilhat's United by the Ocean (FRA) and Francesca Clapcich's 11th Hour Racing (USA) tucked in behind. Boris Herrmann's Team Malizia sits fourth, and closing, after cutting into the frontrunners' advantage overnight.
Fewer than 1,000 nautical miles remain in this inaugural transatlantic race from New York to Lorient on the north-west coast of France. That is not much ocean left to settle a four-way argument.
DMG MORI Global One navigator Nicolas Lunven was watching the sun come up when he filed his report. "We are still leading the fleet but 11th Hour Racing and United by the Ocean are still very close just behind us," he said. "They are a bit faster, which is normal as we are hitting a high pressure zone with no wind, but at least we have a beautiful sunrise just in front of us."
Light stuff, by his account: around 12 knots, and reaching. "The high pressure is supposed to slowly move south-east, to bring us up to the Brittany coast at a reaching angle in very good conditions and nice weather. So it should be a nice end to the race."
11th Hour Racing navigator Will Harris expects good conditions too, but reckons the real variable is how fast that blocking high shifts out of the way. His read is that the race stays open right to the doorstep.
"What I expect is that it is going to come down to the final 100 miles of the race, when we are approaching the north-west corner of France," Harris said. "How this front moves out of the way is going to determine who can be the fastest to get towards the finish in very quickly changing conditions. I think it's going to be a very close finish and we just have to keep pushing all the way to the end."
Team Malizia used the lull to fix a long-standing headache. The German boat has been sailing with a damaged inboard foil for several days, unable to adjust it in the sea state they'd been getting.
"We waited for the wind to drop and to have less sea state to be able to work on the foil case," said skipper Boris Herrmann. "At the advice of the shore crew, we built bumpers to squeeze in front of the foil, so that it would be in a better position for us, with more rake. Now, at least, we have a little bit of rake, 1.6 degrees, so that's better than negative rake. Now the boat has a really nice attitude, flying over the water with the bow up, and a few knots more speed. The boat seems happy, and we are happy too."
Further back, there's a New Zealand interest to watch. MSIG Europe (NZL) sits sixth overall, 344 nautical miles off the pace, but the leaders' detour north around the high has quietly opened a shorter, more direct road to Lorient for the tail of the fleet.
Fifth-placed Embrace the Challenge (SUI), 280 nautical miles back, is best placed to exploit it. "What is very special about the current situation is that although we are very far behind the leading pack, due to our mainsail repair, it actually opens up a much more direct route to Lorient," the team reported. "Conditions are quite calm now but the wind will freshen up and go towards the south. If everything goes well it is pretty much a straight line to the finish. Liz [Wardley] has done a fantastic job on the mainsail repair, so we are not really worried about that any more. So, rather than find a route with moderate winds, we will try and find the fastest route, which is always nice."
Fittingly, it was those two backmarkers who topped Tuesday's Super Sprint. Embrace the Challenge and MSIG Europe took the top two places on the day, catching better wind and sea state than the leaders. Team Malizia was third, enough to keep them clear at the top of the overall Sprint leaderboard.
