This is a nervous time for Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.
A nine-month marathon could end with a sprint to glory and overall victory in France on Wednesday or Thursday.
It also could end with Abu Dhabi’s Azzam straggling in to Lorient, France, which would open the “Everest of sailing” to a fast-finishing rival to snatch ultimate victory in Sweden in two weeks.
The seven-boat Volvo Ocean Racing fleet on Tuesday escaped two exhausting days of tacking and the flukey winds along the coast of Iberia and pushed into the Bay of Biscay, a body of water north of Spain and west of France and known for strong wind and big waves.
Read more:
– Photo gallery: Volvo Ocean Race: Leg 8 from Lisbon, Portugal to Lorient, France
As the crow flies, the fleet was about 400 nautical miles from the finish of Leg 8 as it entered the bay – as the boat sails, it was much farther.
The direct route to Lorient was directly into the eye of south-west winds gusting at about 40kph – no can do.
The choices were to sail north into open water, close-hauled to the wind, presumably with a tack to starboard near Brittany and east to Lorient.
That is the route the early leaders, Team SCA and Team Vestas Wind, chose, followed by Team Dongfeng and Alvimedica.
Abu Dhabi tacked to the east, followed by Team Brunel and Mapfre, apparently intent on skirting the north coast of Spain.
That left skipper Ian Walker and the crew of Azzam unable to keep tabs on both of their nearest pursuers in the overall table – the Chinese-sponsored Dongfeng and the Dutch-backed Brunel.
Dongfeng and Brunel began Leg 8 six points behind leaders Azzam, leaving the Ador boat in prime position.
Walker did the arithmetic and noted that third-place finishes by Azzam in Leg 8 and the concluding Leg 9 would mean a championship crown for Abu Dhabi, no matter what anyone else did.
He also noted that ultimate victory could be accomplished by finishing ahead of each of Dongfeng and Brunel once.
What went unsaid by Walker, in public, were the conditions that would win the race for Azzam during Leg 8.
If the Abu Dhabi boat finishes two places or more ahead of Brunel and Dongfeng in the run to Lorient, they would have an insurmountable eight-point lead with one leg left – as long as Azzam completed the final leg, to Gothenburg, even in last place.
But the possibility of “ending it now” was in the minds of skipper and crew.
Matt Knighton, Azzam’s on-board reporter, on Tuesday wrote: “The overall standings are all everyone is thinking about on-board – how close we are to possibly winning the race – though no one is talking about it. You’ll only be able to glean that truth in a passing whisper.”
If the worst happens, and Azzam’s worst-so-far fifth-place in Leg 7 leads to another poor performance, then another, the dominant boat of the most demanding legs of the race could end the 2014/15 VOR somewhere other than the top step of the podium.
Losing this on the final two legs, the shortest of the race, of a mere 647nm and 1,600nm, would be hard to stomach, given the Abu Dhabi boat’s primary position after the first six legs – none of which were shorter than 5,000nm.
But the points at risk on this leg and the next count the same as those for the epic Leg 5, 18 days at sea and 6,776nm, through the frigid Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn, a leg Azzam won.
This can go so many ways over the next few hundred nautical miles. It could turn on a change of wind, a broken spar, a navigational mistake.
It could find Azzam celebrating, right through the weekend, an overall victory five years in the making. Or it could set up an even nervier Leg 9.
poberjuerge@thenational.ae
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