The Ocean Race is coming back to Europe at the moment. With a nice dose of low pressure, and the gulf stream helping. Which resulted in the previous monohull 24 hour distance record being beaten by not one, not two, but three of the boats participating. In terms of race points this is meaningless, but well.... you know racers. The new record was
accomplished by Team Malizia - by abount half a mile over Holcim-PRB.
The leading trio consisting of leaders 11th Hour Racing, overall leaders Holcim-PRB and new speed kings Malizia is passing the Orkney Islands right about now, and with the high speeds they are going, they will likely arrive in Aarhus on the Danish east coast in 30 to 36 hours (educated guess). Perhaps another night time arrival.
Sadly, the fourth team, Biotherm, apparently had some technical difficulties resulting in them falling off the weather system carrying the other three and because of that, being unable to have their try at the record and more importantly, being over 600 NM behind by now.
Even more sadly, team number five, Guyot,
suffered a dismasting in the closing stages of the last leg (Brazil to the US) and their boat is being transported by cargo ship back to Europe. Perhaps they manage to get a new mast and rejoin (being dead last due to only finishing two out of five legs), perhaps not.
The current overall ranking puts the top three teams within just one point. The current, transatlantic leg counts for double points (10 for the winner, 8 for 2nd, and so on), and there's only two more (normally counting) legs after that. Perhaps that's why this leg seems more tense than the ones before, with a notable lack of epic drone footage from the boats. Or perhaps it's because the drones can barely keep up with the boats at full speed.
Anyway, I will go to Kiel in just under two weeks to watch the "fly-by" of the race there. I hope for an awesome sight - and given that not only the IMOCAs, but also the slower VO65 class fleet (which only does the "European" legs this time) will participate, I am sure I will have something to watch.
A sidenote about the speed records: In my opinion foiling boats should have a separate category...