The Swiss-flagged IMOCA Team Holcim–PRB, skippered by Frenchman Kevin Escoffier, has extended its overall race lead by winning the second leg of The Ocean Race 2022-23 after leading the five-boat fleet into Cape Town on Sunday (12 February) at the end of a testing, challenging passage from Cabo Verde.
The leg win is the team’s second consecutive victory after also finishing in the top spot in the around-the-world race’s opening stage from Alicante, Spain to Mindelo in the Cabo Verde islands, and sees Escoffier’s team cement its lead in the overall standings.
The Swiss boat was first across the finish line off Cape Town’s waterfront at 3.10pm local time (1310 UTC) on Sunday afternoon after a tense four-way battle in the final few hours of the leg with second-placed Biotherm (FRA) led by France’s Paul Meilhat, USA skipper Charlie Enright’s third-placed 11th Hour Racing Team.
Remarkably, after two-and-a-half weeks of open ocean racing among boats built to differing designs, just three miles and 25 minutes separated the top three teams — with Biotherm finishing just 16 minutes behind the winners, and 11th Hour Racing Team a further nine minutes back.
Escoffier’s winning crew — Sam Goodchild (GBR), Tom Laperche (FRA), Susann Beucke (GER) and onboard reporter Georgia Schofield (NZL) — completed the 4,600-nautical-mile leg in 17 days, 19 hours, 0 minutes and 9 seconds.
Asked about how a fleet of non-one-design offshore racing boats could deliver such ultra-close racing, Goodchild said: “The weather played into it a little bit, and also the last 24 hours of the leg was a little bit ‘roll the dice and hope for the best’. For us it rolled in the right place — and we will take that — but you cannot deny that any of the top four boats could have won it.
“We happen to be the ones today, but I think any one of us would have merited [victory] no more or less than another.”
Escoffier — a two-time competitor in The Ocean Race and a member of the victorious Dongfeng Race Team (CHN) crew in the 2017-18 edition — said the Swiss-entry’s winning move had been somehow managing to get to leeward of their rivals on the final approach to Cape Town.
“Overnight, we had been losing and losing to Biotherm who were to leeward. [We knew] that the last one to have [leeward positioning] would win. We have been lucky — but, also, we had been working hard for it.”
Paul Meilhat, skipper of Biotherm, said he and his crew felt a little fortunate to have been able to get the better of the American 11th Hour Racing Team on the final day to secure second place.
Paul Meilhat and his Biotherm crew who finished third into Cape Town on Sunday | Credit: Sailing Energy/The Ocean Race
“It was quite tricky at the end and for a while we were ahead of Holcim-PRB and 11th Hour Racing Team. But it’s ocean racing and that means you don’t know until you cross the finish line,” he said.
Biotherm finished third behind the USA team on leg one but made much of the early running on this second stage. Meilhat said the atmosphere and attitude on the boat had been very good during the leg: a factor he said that bodes well for the rest of the race.
“On the first leg we were far away from the leaders, but on this one we were the leader for the first five days,” he said. “So it was totally different. We know that the boat and the crew have good potential and we can race [competitively] against the others. This is a long race and I think it is going to be this close all the way to the end.”
11th Hour Racing Team’s British navigator Simon Fisher — a veteran of five editions of The Ocean Race and part of the winning Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing crew in 2014-15 — said the leg had seen more transitions between weather systems than had been expected.
Fisher singled out the final day of light air racing as one of the trickiest to deal with: “It was a very unusual sort of holding pattern at the end of the leg, where we could see the finish but we couldn’t really get there [because] there was this big ridge [of high pressure] blocking us.
“We had to hedge on the way we wanted to go, but the answer wasn’t really clear, so we had to position ourselves so that we could make a move when we felt it was the right decision. Let’s just hope some of the other legs have a simpler finish.”
German entry Team Malizia arrived in Cape Town in fourth place at 1516 UTC. The crew — led by British sailor Will Harris standing in for injured skipper Boris Herrmann — had looked to be making a charge for the lead earlier during the day before their southerly positioning ultimately took them into a patch of super-light wind which dropped them out of contention for a podium place. But according to Rosalin Kuiper, the setback didn’t diminish the mood on board.
“For me and the team this leg was a big achievement with some highs and lows,” Kuiper said. “We initially had to catch up on the others big time. We were very far behind the fleet. But we see the potential of our boat. It will be very good in the southern ocean and I’m looking forward to the next leg.”
Meanwhile, fifth-placed GUYOT environnement – Team Europe continued a late comeback run to complete the fleet dockside in Cape Town just before sunset. The European flagged team had trailed by as much as 510 miles earlier in the leg, only to close the gap to just over 50 miles by the finish.
“We lost contact with the fleet as they had better conditions and sailed much faster,” skipper Robert Stanjek said. “By the end we had better breeze so we had the chance to come back. It was close, not ecnough, but it was a very beautiful leg.”
GUYOT environnement – Team Europe make their final approach to the V+A Waterfront as the sun sets over Cape Town on Sunday evening | Credit: Sailing Energy/The Ocean Race
Billed as a leg on which managing the numerous transitions between weather systems would be a key factor, the second stage of The Ocean Race 2022-23 from Cabo Verde to Cape Town got off to a slow start with light five-to-eight-knot northeasterly winds replacing the normal breezy trade wind conditions in the region.
That meant the crews in the five-boat IMOCA fleet had to first pick their way carefully away from the Cabo Verde archipelago, avoiding the gigantic wind shadows cast by the mountainous islands, before trying to connect with the re-establishing trade winds on the way to the equator.
Three days after the start, and with the potentially windless and unpredictable doldrums looming large, the crews each had to choose what they believed would be the optimum route across the equator and into the southern hemisphere trade winds. Traditionally, a more westerly crossing is favoured.
Ultimately it was the European crew on GUYOT environnement – Team Europe who were first across the equator shortly after 0200 UTC on 31 January, albeit with the rest of the fleet hot on their heels.
The crew’s choice, led on Leg 2 by German skipper Robert Stanjek, was on a more direct easterly route and it began to pay dividends as the fleet quickly transitioned to 12– 18-knot trade wind sailing as they charged their way south.
In the end, though, their eastern gamble did not pay off, as they ran out of wind after getting too close to the notorious St Helena High — a persistent weather system with light winds — and quickly dropped to the bottom of the rankings.
A little further west, Leg 1 winner Team Holcim-PRB had made the best progress south and now looked well positioned to capitalise further on stronger winds away from the high as the pack began to step their way south and east.
However, by the time the fleet gybed to the east and finally turned their bows towards Cape Town, the Team Holcim–PRB, Team Malizia, and 11th Hour Racing Team crews were consistently trading the lead back and forth between them as they closed down the miles towards the Leg 2 finish.
The foiling IMOCAs were, at times, setting a furious pace as they tore through the Roaring Forties each clocking up 24-hour runs of more than 500nm. But it was the American entry 11th Hour Racing Team who won the leg’s 24-Hour Distance Challenge by Ulysse Nardin with a run of 542.68 nm at a top speed of 22.6 knots on 8 February.
The final 48 hours of the leg saw Biotherm join the still-raging three-way battle for the lead after a high-pressure ridge south west of Cape Town slowed the leading trio to a crawl.
Lift-out for the IMOCA fleet for maintenance ahead of next week’s In-Port Race and the epic Leg 3 | Credit: Sailing Energy/The Ocean Race
At 0900 UTC on the final day, less than five nautical miles separated the top four teams as they crawled their way towards the South African coast in drifting conditions with fewer than 30nm left to race.
At this stage, Team Malizia’s more southerly positioning had enabled the German-flagged yacht to hold on to the breeze significantly longer and ease their way into a 2nm lead on the advantage line to Cape Town. But as the wind reached the rest of the fleet, their southerly position proved to be too slow an angle and they dropped off the fight for a podium position.
This left the Biotherm, 11th Hour Racing Team, and the Holcim-PRB crews to fight it out over the final miles to the finish, sailing within clear sight of each other in light and changeable downwind conditions.
Finally, around 1030 UTC the Team Holcim–PRB crew began to sail a faster lower angle than their rivals to secure the controlling leeward position they had been gunning for since early morning.
That positioning enabled them to sail tactically over the final 20 miles by keeping themselves between the finish line and Biotherm and 11th Hour Racing Team in second and third respectively, to earn their second leg win out of two so far in this edition of The Ocean Race around the world.
The five IMOCAs will now undergo a few days of maintenance work to be race ready for the In-Port Race on Friday 24 February, then for the Leg 3 start on Sunday 26 February. Leg 3 from Cape Town to Itajaí, Brazil, is a 12,750nm record distance in the history of the race and will award double points.
With two legs of The Ocean Race 2022-23 completed, the standings are as follows:
- Team Holcim – PRB (SUI) — 10 points
- 11th Hour Racing Team (USA) — 7 points
- Biotherm (FRA) — 6 points
- Team Malizia (GER) — 5 points
- GUYOT environnement – Team Europe — 2 points
