LEG 9 LORIENT FRANCE TO GOTHENBURG SWEDEN
The start of Leg 9 Lorient to Gothenburg will commence shortly and constitutes the last and final leg of the Volvo Ocean race. However, this leg has a major twist to it -- a 24-hour Pit stop at The Hague --where crew will be allowed to go ashore but the fleet must must remain in the water. This could possibly turn out to be the toughest leg of the entire race because it is relatively short and any repairs needed to be done to the yacht has to be done onboard by the crew while racing and they are only use permitted to use spares and equipment already on board. The pit-stop can make or break the race for the competitors, considering the teams have been at it for the past 8 months. With the multitude of shipping lanes and strong currents, there could be many surprises and it could be anyones race. At the moment Abu Dhabi appears to be the favorite and may win by default since it's already 6 points ahead of Team Brunel, its closest competitor. The first yacht to cross the line in The Hague will resume racing at 12:00 local time on June 20. Every other yacht allowed to resume the race in the same amount of time it finished behind the first yacht. This could be have a huge impact on sailing conditions, due to variable weather like wind direction and intensity and rough seas.
By the look of the race team results below, it is more than obvious that since Dongfeng Race Team's mast disaster and Team Vestas Wind's Hull disaster both teams kinda lost their groove but more so Dongfeng. Before Itajai they had 18 points beating both Mapfre and Alvimedica but hopefully it might get better for them since made 3rd place in the 8th leg. The girls did very very well with half the points awarded to Team vestas Wind. Rather than let me predict, lets leave it to the race teams to fight it out enroute to the home of the Volvo Ocean Race.
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