Race Director's Report
Race 2: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Cape Town, South Africa

What an absolutely fantastic race! From one beautiful landfall to another, and just thirty two minutes separating the first three boats into Cape Town. This race had everything that an ocean racer could hope for; light winds, heavy weather and many tactical decisions.

The start way back in Rio de Janeiro looked very good from a weather point of view with the high pressure that came off the South American mainland south of the fleet creating a good corridor of breeze for the first few days between the old front and the approaching one. The fleet sprinted out of the blocks with 25 knots off Copacabana Beach.

A baptism of fire. Big wind, big seas. The fleet faced over 30 knots of wind and short sharp swells on the nose- a recipe for seasickness and most of the teams were affected. It was very hard going and even some of our well weathered round the worlders suffered. Huge 24-hour runs were achieved from the get-go, in some case 270 nautical miles.

After a mammoth effort from the crews and shore team to get them ready, LMAX Exchange and Qingdao were ready to depart Brazil on 11 October. They actually started 83 hours and 10 minutes after the main fleet and sailed exactly the same distance. They had different weather and had slightly different tactical decisions to make. Such as when the South Atlantic High split making it unlikely that the ten yachts of the main fleet would go for the Scoring Gate. In fact only three yachts went for that option, diving south to try and gain the valuable points.

Qingdao also went for it and actually pipped Derry~Londonderry~Doire by two hours and twenty minutes on elapsed time which pushed IchorCoal out of the points. But IchorCoal had its revenge by posting the fastest Ocean Sprint time, bagging itself two extra points.

The last section of the race was interesting as it was dominated by a high-pressure system ahead of the fleet. The eastern most front-runners sailed into it and allowed the others to close the gap.

LMAX Exchange and Qingdao still had a lot of chasing to do with Qingdao opting to dive south under it with LMAX Exchange taking a more direct route. The rest of the fleet had a race within a race as they closed South Africa and entered Table Bay. Table Bay dealt its card and light winds punctuated by strong 50 knot gusts were the order of the day. The longtime leader, Garmin was cruelly denied line honours and the race win by these oh so fickle of conditions.

It just goes to prove that doing well is predicated on good weather routing and also sailing a race committing the least number of unforced errors as possible. Ten minutes probably equates to a sail hoist that wasn’t quite so slick.