With three teams tied for the lead to start the final leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, Leg 11 was always going to be intense. 

© Ugo Fonolla/Volvo Ocean Race

But overnight, the intensity ratcheted up to unseen levels. 

The leaders, Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE, swapped the lead back and forth. The third team in the mix for the overall title, Team Brunel, recovered from a poor opening to the leg and saw their defict drop from 20 miles to as close as four miles. 

As at 0700 UTC on Saturday morning, Charles Caudrelier's Dongfeng Race Team was half a mile ahead of Xabi Fernández's crew on MAPFRE. Bouwe Bekking's Brunel team was 8 miles back. 

The leading group was just under 20 miles from the Norway turning mark.

© Jeremie Lecaudey/Volvo Ocean Race

Maintaining a grip on a podium position was Charlie Enright and Vestas 11th Hour Racing, fresh off the Aarhus mark rounding in front of 'home' crowd of Vestas supporters in Denmark.

But at the front of the fleet, with the race on the line, the tension is palpable.

"We're in a building breeze right now, about 17 miles off the waypoint where we will bear away and head to Denmark," said Dongfeng Race Team's Carolijn Brouwer on Saturday morning.

"We have MAPFRE just to leeward of us. We've had a battle with them in the transitions, flapping around in no wind and that also gave an opportunity for the back of the fleet to catch up a little bit. Vestas is quite close and the others are further, about10 miles back I'm guessing."

"It's been a busy night for us on MAPFRE," said Antonio Cuervos-Mons. "We are pretty tight with Dongfeng and we have to keep pushing. Last evening we had upwind and reaching conditions and now we have a bit of a compression with everyone coming together. But it seems like Dongfeng and us we have escaped a little bit, we got the breeze before them..."

For Brunel, it's been a positive 12 hours of racing, recovering at least 10 miles to the leading pair. But there is still a lot of work to do if Bekking is to be in the mix on the sprint down the west coast of Denmark to The Hague.

"We've got to hope we find a passing lane somewhere between now and the finish," said boat captain Abby Ehler. "I'm trying to remain optimistic, but it's hard. It's going to be tough. But we will keep pushing - never give up."

The rest of the fleet is in the mix. Vestas 11th Hour Racing is holding firmly to its third place podium position while team AkzoNobel has been back and forth with Brunel.

© Rich Edwards/Volvo Ocean Race

At the back of the fleet Scallywag is holding tight to Turn the Tide on the Plastic. This is the race for sixth place and it too appears like it will go down to the wire.

 

 

Welcome to what must be one of the most intense legs in Volvo Ocean Race history. As it stands, (1900 UTC) and according to our live tracker, Dongfeng Race Team are just managing to fend off MAPFRE by 0.6 nautical miles. 

After a mark rounding in the City of Aarhus, we could hardly believe how close the two leading boats were. Take a look at the live coverage from our helicopter and Naill Myant-Best live from the dock below. 

Live Replay - Aarhus Fly-By: Part One | Volvo Ocean Race

Live Replay - Aarhus Fly-By: Part Two | Volvo Ocean Race

To read the latest updates coming in thick and fast from our editorial team, you can visit the Volvo Ocean Race homepage at www.volvooceanrace.com.

This race is known for raw emotion and nothing could sum the Aarhus Fly-By up better than this picture of Jena Mai Hansen as Vestas 11th Hour Racing entered her home port to round the mark in 3rd place to thousands of fans cheering. Congratualtions to Jeremie Lecaudey for capturing the moment. 

© Jeremie Lecaudey/Volvo Ocean Race

It's been hard to pick the best content to go into today's Daily Digest. We have three teams in deat heat for the overall win, a fierce Dutch battle between Team Brunel and team AkzoNobel to beat each other into The Hague, a match race of epic proportions for the lead between Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE... and to top it off, a ferocious battle at the back of the fleet between Turn the Tide on Plastic and Team SHK/Scallywag. Who is your money on? 

When Xabi Fernandez stepped onto the dock in Gothenburg, the first thing he said was that Team Brunel had found another gear from somewhere. Judging from the tweet below it's looking like the team are preapring to put that magic gear in motion. 

We've had a difficult day?. The red boats sneaked away and are about 20 miles ahead of us. Time for some Team Brunel magic! #teambrunel pic.twitter.com/lUagF4d3R8

— BrunelSailing (@brunelsailing) June 22, 2018

Usually our sailors slip into a 4-hours-on, 4-hours-off sleeping pattern but this short and intense leg is taking them to new levels of exhaustion where sleeping is not an option. The caption to this picture from Onboard Reporter Rich Edwards is 'Lucas Chapman takes five'. That's five minutes sleep in 24 hours? Ouch. 

© Rich Edwards/Volvo Ocean Race

On the water it's full on so we've got a little sneak peak behind the scenes of the Gothenburg stopover that will lighten your stress levels slightly... here is episode 15 of Gybe Talking. 

Volvo Ocean Race Gybe Talking – Episode 15, Gothenburg

Finally, if you don't want to miss a thing and watch history in the making - follow our Race Experts on Twitter. 

13:00 UTC Position Report. @desafioMAPFRE have closed the gap a little on the approach to the Aarhus rounding mark which they should round in the next 20 minutes. #Watchlog pic.twitter.com/wpZgXs74yn

— Race Experts (@RaceExperts) June 22, 2018

Special thanks to Inmarsat for enabling us to keep everyone in the loop with the onboard content! 

© Jesus Renedo/Volvo Ocean Race

To reduce our plastic footprint, food serviceware such as plates, cups, and cutlery were compostable, and along with food waste, were collected in attractively designed bins for onward processing into valuable organic fertiliser.

The Swedish company also used their presence at the stopover to inform visitors of importance of recovering all plastic at the end of its life. The different types of plastic, the recycling options and what can be made out of the recycled plastic were on display.

Meegan Jones, Volvo Ocean Race Sustainability Programme Manager, said: “With the help of Stena Recycling and through our onsite initiatives, we were able to closely match the types of resources generated by the Race Village and ensure responsible recovery and processing of these to feed the circular economy.

“We take our responsibility to educate, inform and showcase best practice very seriously and through our resource recovery efforts we make sure s little as possible is lost to landfill.”

Stena Recycling has been involved in the business since 1939 and currently recycles over 220,000 cars each year.

The company process some of these scrapped cars in the Stena Nordic Recycling Centre, their state of the art recycling complex in Halmstad, where they return 650,000 tonnes of raw materials back into circulation every year.

At 433,000 square metres, the Swedish facility, which is the size of 80 football pitches, uses proven technology combined with new innovation as part of a circular economy approach.

With 95 per cent recycling rates for scrapped cars, the facility enables them to avoid sending materials long distances for further processing thus reducing the ecological footprint.

By the time a car has gone through the entire recycling process, it will have been broken down into around 30 different grades of material, including plastics and metal. These are then used to make materials that can be turned into a range of new products, including car parts.

Kristofer Sundsgård, CEO Stena Recycling, said: “As Sweden's leading recycling company, we see great opportunities for spreading knowledge about sustainable recycling solutions through the Volvo Ocean Race.”

© Ainhoa Sanchez/Volvo Ocean Race

Dongfeng Race Team holds a narrow lead over MAPFRE after one day of racing in the final leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. Team Brunel is in fourth place.

Arch rivals Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE were locked in a bitter tussle for the Leg 11 lead – and overall Volvo Ocean Race victory – on Friday as they led the fleet towards the Danish city of Aarhus.

One third of the way through the 970-mile sprint final leg from Gothenburg to The Hague the seven teams were today split by less than 20 miles as they charged south through the Kattegat, the strait separating Sweden and Denmark.

After rounding the first course mark off Norway overnight, the leading pair profited from better breeze than their counterparts and extended the gap at the front.

© Ugo Fonolla/Volvo Ocean Race

With the second mark at Aarhus, on Denmark’s east coast, just 10 miles away, the two red boats were just one-mile apart as of 1200 UTC, keeping alive the battle that will grant overall race victory to whichever of Dongfeng, MAPFRE and Team Brunel finishes ahead of the others.

Their closest rivals on the race course, Vestas 11th Hour Racing, were a little under six miles back, in third place, while Brunel held down fourth but have work to do to narrow a gap of over 15 miles.

As well as being a monstrous battle between the crews, the race for the overall title is also a personal one.

Charles Caudrelier skippered Dongfeng to third spot in the 2014-15 edition, while Brunel, under race veteran Bouwe Bekking’s leadership, finished second.

MAPFRE skipper Xabi Fernández has raced four times but never lifted the trophy.

What’s more, if MAPFRE or Team Brunel win the race, either MAPFRE’s Blair Tuke or Brunel’s Peter Burling will become the first sailor ever to complete the ‘triple crown’: victory in the Olympics, the America’s Cup and the Volvo Ocean Race.

But one-third of the way through the challenging final leg, the focus has narrowed to the next manoeuvre, the next transition.

“This downwind section has been pretty tricky – in general there’s been a big extension,” MAPFRE’s Tuke said.

© Sam Greenfield/Volvo Ocean Race

“We’ve gained quite a lot on Brunel, AkzoNobel and Vestas. We’ve managed to stay close to Dongfeng but for a little while it was pretty scary – they managed to get five or six miles in front of us. As we’ve come into Denmark we’ve compressed again.

“We’re now on one of our fastest sail setups, so all’s good but hopefully we can catch up even more, and, at some stage before The Hague, pass them.”

On Brunel the crew were cursing their luck as they watched the gap to the frontrunners grow – but had faith in the forecast which predicts the wind to drop coming into Aarhus, providing an opportunity to catch up.

“It’s been a case of ‘the rich get richer’ since rounding the mark off Norway,” Burling said. “The fleet’s been expanding a little, but there should be a pretty good compression as we come into Aarhus. Hopefully we can catch up with them again.”

© Sam Greenfield/Volvo Ocean Race

Skipper Bouwe Bekking added: “We didn't sail too smart yesterday afternoon and that has become expensive. At the rounding mark off Norway still in good contention, but then it went backwards. We will keep fighting until the end.”

Onboard Dongfeng, the crew were taking nothing for granted.

“We’ve sailed really nicely against MAPFRE and they’re still behind us,” Dongfeng watch captain Daryl Wislang said. “Let’s hope it can stay like that. It’s going to be a battle that’s for sure.”

After rounding the Aarhus mark the fleet will then head north to a virtual mark close to the Norwegian coast, which they will leave to port, before beginning the run south into the Leg 11 finish line at the Dutch capital of The Hague.

The current ETA sees the leaders arriving on Sunday afternoon local time.

© Konrad Frost/Volvo Ocean Race

Behind the leading group, the battle for sixth place on the overall leaderboard continues between SHK/Scallywag and Turn the Tide on Plastic. Currently, the pair are sailing bow to bow with a slight edge to the Scallywags.

Follow every moment of the final leg of the Volvo Ocean Race - Go to www.volvooceanrace.com for live coverage on the Race Tracker as well as the latest content from the race boats.

There will also be live aerial footage of the fleet as they fight it out in the final battle of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race.

Volvo Ocean Race Leg 11 Leaderboard – 1200 UTC Thursday 22 June
1. Dongfeng Race Team – 628.8 nautical miles to finish
2. MAPFRE – 0.7 nautical miles to leader
3. Vestas 11th Hour Racing – 5.6 nautical miles to leader
4. Team Brunel – 14.8 nautical miles to leader
5. team AkzoNobel – 16.3 distance to the leader
6. SHK / Scallywag – 19.1 nautical miles to leader
7. Turn the Tide on Plastic – 19.3 nautical miles to leader

Volvo Ocean Race Overall Points Leaderboard after Leg 10
1. MAPFRE – 65 points
2. Team Brunel – 65 points
3. Dongfeng Race Team – 64 points *
4. team AkzoNobel – 53 points
5. Vestas 11th Hour Racing – 38 points
6. SHK / Scallywag – 30 points
7. Turn the Tide on Plastic – 29 points

* One additional point will be awarded to the team with the best elapsed time at the conclusion of the race in The Hague. Currently, Dongfeng would win this point.
** Should there be a tie on the overall race leaderboard at the end of the offshore legs, the In-Port Race Series standings will be used to break the tie.

The Legends Race
Also starting on Thursday 21 June was The Legends Race.

To celebrate the history of the race, 12 legendary boats from seven of the past editions have gathered for another chance at victory, putting their lineage on the line for a competition from Gothenburg, the Swedish stopover port of the Volvo Ocean Race, to the Dutch port of The Hague, the finish destination for the current round-the-world race.

Full coverage is here - https://www.facebook.com/legendsrace2018/ 

Mangina-PYR, aka Adelaine-based Matt Johnson, is no stranger to life at the front of the fleet, having won the 2016-17 Vendee Globe game.

However he’s practically neck and neck with New Zealander Barquerme in second, with Brazilian player xiribitz_1 in third just 0.1 of a mile behind.

A mile back, overall game leader Tessa94 was in 30th.

© Virtual Regatta

As is customary in the Volvo Ocean Race game, the positions at the top have been changing constantly – and less than 1.5 miles separates the top 50 players.

The leading pack were today inside 350 miles of the finish line in the Danish capital of The Hague, having enjoyed a fast dive south from Gothenburg to Aarhus on the east coast of Denmark and then back north again.

Moderate north-westerly winds are forecast to fire the fleet towards the Leg 11 finish line, bringing to a close the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race.

After a nine-month battle with British player Sideshow, Tessa94 has done enough to know that overall victory is secure – but there’s still plenty of spoils up for grabs.

Who’ll claim the bragging rights of winning the 11th and final leg of the Volvo Ocean Race game? Stay tuned to www.volvooceanrace.com/game to find out!