The first official racing of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race takes place on the 14 October with the first In-Port race in the start port of Alicante.
Who will win the first points scoring event of the race? The start gun is at 14:00 local time (12:00 UTC) as seven of the best sailing teams in the world push hard to lay down a marker ahead of the main race start.
“You always go out and want to win,” said Bouwe Bekking, skipper of Team Brunel, who will have Alberto (Albi) Bolzan on the helm for the race. “He’s an excellent helmsman. He has a lot of hours driving these boats but he’s also one of the smaller guys on board and it’s important to have power on the winches for these in-port races.”
“I think the most important thing for the in-port race is to treat it as practice for the race start for the offshore leg,” said Charles Caudrelier, speaking from experience after starting behind the fleet on the Prologue leg. “Even on the long legs, the start is important… it helps the team to be confident to get the lead early.”
“A lot of the sailors on our team come from short course racing,” said Dee Caffari the skipper on Turn the Tide on Plastic. “So they get a real buzz out of this. They’re all over this style of racing. I have to remind them that a Volvo Ocean 65 takes a bit longer to manoeuvre and we can’t go as close to the other boats as they’re used to, so I have to manage expectations a bit!”
The In-Port Race Alicante is two laps of a windward-leeward course, set with a target time of 45-minutes. The course is set up with a gate system, with two top (windward) marks and two bottom (leeward) marks.
In Friday’s practice session, MAPFRE took the win over Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag, who impressed with their best showing, and Vestas 11th Hour Racing, who took third place, completing the podium.
Additional reporting and images: Volvo Ocean Race