Throwback Thursday: To go south or not to go south? That is the question

The South Atlantic challenge is one of risk and chance – how far south do you go?

Big swells, heavy storms and occasional wind holes dictated the fate of the fleet as it continued its marathon towards Cape Town in Leg 2 for this week’s Throwback Thursday, taking a look back to this time last year.

It was a tense race to watch, with the South Atlantic high not in its usual position, the teams were divided between racing the Rhumb line and adding miles to head further south in the search for stronger more favourable westerly winds.

Early on in the race the fleet split in two and some of the teams took the tactical decision to plunge south, putting more miles between them and the finish line.

One of those teams was OneDLL, led by skipper Olly Cotterell. Reflecting on the race, Olly says:

“We made the decision to head south early on in Leg 2. To those watching us on the Race Viewer, it did not seem like we were being competitive because of our more southerly route, as the distance we were making towards Cape Town appeared less at first.

“There were some tactics in our madness, hoping that we would make bigger gains racing in more favourable winds. The entire fleet was torn as to what tactical card to play and only time would tell which teams got it right.”

Invest Africa decided to head further south from the start of the race and by now were hot on the heels of its competitors in a successful campaign that closed 40 miles on the leader in a mere 24 hours. The fight for first place was always in play during this nail biting race, with the leaderboard shifting constantly and the front runners looking over their shoulders until the very end.

To find out more about the race to South Africa, click here

To join us for the next edition of the race, click here