The Volvo Ocean Race is no longer the epic marathon it was in the beginning, with limited stopovers and the classic up and down the Atlantic segments combined with long Southern Ocean legs. Now the race has nine legs, and a points system that includes day races at each stopover. This allows a team to drop out or even miss a leg and still remain in contention.
Leg 6 is coming down to the final stage. After the start in Itajai, Brazil, the fleet reached up the coast of Brazil in close proximity. Puma established a small lead which they held to the corner at Recife and through the doldrums into the Caribbean. Camper and Telifonica have remained close and the race is still entirely up for grabs for these three. The boats must leave Eluthera in the Bahamas to port and the finish is in Miami.
How the teams handle the expected light winds over the last few hundred miles will decide this leg, and anyone interested in ocean voyaging and how to handle weather changes can learn from watching these professionals. The weather information the racers use is delivered to them by the race administrators, and is identical for each boat. The teams must also make their decisions without the help of weather routers ashore, and the communications off the boats frequently cover why they are making the decisions we can watch on the race tracker.
The race tracker is here-http://www.
You can overlay the weather forecast on the tracker page as well as read a detailed forecast.
