With roughly 900 nautical miles left to Lorient, the Ocean Race Atlantic has narrowed to a genuine sprint finish. DMG Mori, 11th Hour Racing, United by the Ocean and Malizia are separated by just 10.1 nautical miles after more than 2,500nm of racing, all four forced nearly 200nm north off the direct line to route around a large windless patch blocking their path. The broadcast's own read on it: the lead has been trading in half-mile increments, with no reliable way to predict who's ahead by the time the fleet reaches France.
Ocean Race Atlantic: Distance to Finish
Tracker snapshots, Day 1 to Day 3
Source: The Ocean Race Atlantic live tracker
Six days after striking an object in the water and losing the use of one foil, Malizia's improvised fix, ropes and duct-tape bumpers wedged into the foil case, is working. "Without this repair it would have been impossible," navigator Julien Villion said on board. "We're not fully at 100%, but it's locked again in a better position than before, giving us a lot more power." At one point Malizia hit 19.3 knots while the boats to the south sat at 13-14kt, a real return to competitiveness for a boat that spent days on the back foot.
Both DMG Mori and United by the Ocean have crews hand-steering through the tricky, shifting conditions rather than trusting the autopilot. Skipper Sam Davies steers DMG Mori through a wheel that isn't physically connected to the rudders at all, it feeds into a computer that talks to the autopilot, letting her feel and control the boat's response without a direct mechanical link.
The chasers are closing, but the weather isn't equally kind
Embrace the Challenge and MSIG Europe, both well back on distance, are making up real ground as the windless patch that's been blocking the front four clears from their own path first. Embrace the Challenge's gap has closed from 266.2nm to 261.4nm in the space of half an hour on the tracker; MSIG Europe's from 331.6nm to 327.7nm in the same window.
The front four are being set up for what the broadcast called "solid reaching conditions" that should carry them all the way to the outskirts of the Bay of Biscay. The two boats behind are simply getting a cleared path where the blockage used to be, not necessarily the same strength or duration of breeze. Closing the immediate gap is one thing; whether that momentum holds once they're through the gap and into open water behind the leaders is the real question for the next day of racing.
Embrace the Challenge has backed its position up on the water regardless, winning the Super Sprint for the second day running. MSIG Europe finished second today.
Weather and the road to Lorient
Race organisers are now estimating roughly 62 hours to the finish from this morning's broadcast, putting arrival at Lorient in the Friday timeframe. The final 10-15 nautical miles near the French coast are flagged as genuinely hard to predict, coastal weather rarely behaves as forecast this close to a finish line.
Today marks the anniversary of the original Whitbread Round the World Race, which departed on this date back in 1973, the race this event is a direct descendant of.
Standings, Day 7
DMG Mori – 726.9nm to finish
11th Hour Racing – 728.5nm (1.5nm behind)
United by the Ocean – 732.5nm (5.6nm behind)
Malizia – 737.0nm (10.1nm behind)
Embrace the Challenge – 988.4nm (261.4nm behind)
MSIG Europe – 1054.7nm (327.7nm behind)
Overnight, United by the Ocean lost around 30 minutes wrestling a jammed Code Zero off its lock, the kind of small, costly mishap that happens, as one crew member put it, "always at 2am." In a race this tight, that half hour matters. With four boats covering ten miles and two more closing fast from behind, nothing about this finish is settled yet.
