Team AkzoNobel and SHK/Scallywag are the big winners over the past 24 hours as both have had a relatively fast transition through the doldrums.
© Rich Edwards/Volvo Ocean Race
This has allowed them to gain about 100 miles on the chasing pack who have suffered through some painful moments.
Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE have had the worst of it. Languishing for hour after hour in extremely light and variable winds, while at the same time AkzoNobel and Scallywag were hurrying south at speeds up to 20 knots.
In the middle, Team Brunel and Turn the Tide on Plastic made their escape ahead of the final pair and at 1300 UTC on Saturday find themselves making good speed chasing down the leaders.
The next 24 hours look to be slightly more settled with the fleet racing south in moderate westerly winds. But by Sunday night (UTC), the leaders will be bumping into the second half of this doldrums crossing.
This looks to be a more complicated transition than usual, with cyclone activity to the south of the fleet disrupting the normal weather patterns. It will make the start of the week extremely challenging, and there is likely to be some kind of compression in the fleet with the back markers making gains as the leaders slow.
Regrettably, non-safety communication with the fleet has been disrupted since Friday evening UTC. Inmarsat confirms that it is currently experiencing an outage of its I-4 F1, L-band satellite, which covers the Asia Pacific region.
The cause has been identified as a spacecraft altitude control issue. Inmarsat is currently implementing the specific recovery activities to establish a safe return to normal operations as soon as possible.
This has impacted the On Board Reporters being able to send media off the boat so the RAW section of www.volvooceanrace.com is not being updated.
However the safety of the fleet has not been affected by the outage as Race Control is still able to track the boats and send basic messages to the fleet by email via an alternative Inmarsat satellite.
We will have more information on this issue as it becomes available.
Leg 6
Hong Kong to Auckland
17 February 2018
Positions at: 13:00 UTC
DTL nm
GAIN_LOSS
STATUS
SPEED kt
COURSE
TWS kt
TWD
DTF nm
1
AKZO
0.00
0.00
RAC
15.9
150º
13.5
267º
2118.07
2
SHKS
54.79
6.11
RAC
12.3
136º
12.0
227º
2172.86
3
TBRU
129.86
15.20
RAC
15.7
167º
16.0
300º
2247.93
4
TTOP
183.34
23.74
RAC
10.7
128º
9.2
244º
2301.41
5
DFRT
224.09
39.07
RAC
17.5
129º
16.0
256º
2342.16
6
MAPF
237.29
39.97
RAC
19.0
157º
21.2
247º
2355.36
7
VS11
DNS
