Volvo Ocean Race - Team AkzoNobel works up handy lead
by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World NZ on 24 Oct 2017
Leg 01, Alicante to Lisbon, First Morning on board AkzoNobel. Volvo Ocean Race. 23 October, 2017 Konrad Frost / Volvo Ocean Race
At the 0100UTC report Team AkzoNobel appeared to have established a handy lead according to the weather routing function of Predictwind.
The model works on the basis of taking the boat's reported position and then sailing her on a optimum course taking in to account the polar for a Volvo65 and the current weather.
Using the very accurate ECMWF feed in Predictwind, Team AkzNobel has stepped out to a 90min lead by the time of race finish in Lisbon.
Vestas 11th Hour racing has the shortest distance to sail to the finish at 1043nm. She is one of a group of four boats that is forecast to finish within 12 minutes of each other. The group in finishing order of time is Turn the Tide, Dongfeng, Team Brunel, and Vestas 11th Hour.
Race favorite MAPFRE is predicted to be 24 minutes behind Vestas at the finish, with Scallywag predicted to finish 50 minutes behind MAPFRE.
Team Brunel has the longest distance to sail, which concurs with her being placed at the bottom of the official results.
Team AkzoNobel is predicted to get a burst of 20kts of breeze in the next few hours before she hits a light patch during the day of October 25 (UTC) she is predicted to round the island of Porto Santo at around 0100 on Thursday 26 and will be in a breeze of 16kts, as she heads for the finish off Lisbon.
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