Charlie Enright and Vestas 11th Hour Racing wins Gothenburg In-Port Race, MAPFRE claim In-Port Series title

Three teams poised to take the prize heading into winner-takes-all final leg

Story by Jesus Renedo/Volvo Ocean Race, Photos by Richard W Dionne Jr
Posted 6/20/18

Charlie Enright’s Vestas 11th Hour Racing showed great patience and sailed a clean race for a victory in the Gothenburg In-Port Race on Sunday.But it was Xabi Fernández’s MAPFRE …

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Charlie Enright and Vestas 11th Hour Racing wins Gothenburg In-Port Race, MAPFRE claim In-Port Series title

Three teams poised to take the prize heading into winner-takes-all final leg

Posted

Charlie Enright’s Vestas 11th Hour Racing showed great patience and sailed a clean race for a victory in the Gothenburg In-Port Race on Sunday.
But it was Xabi Fernández’s MAPFRE team who rode a third place finish on Sunday to win the overall In-Port Race Series, sailing 11 points clear of their closest pursuers, Dongfeng Race Team.
With one In-Port Race left in The Hague, MAPFRE can now not be overtaken on the leaderboard.
“It’s a box ticked for us and we’re very happy with it,” Fernández said. “Today is a good day for us. We were planning to sail our own race, but in the start we saw it wasn’t going well for us so we decided to hold up Dongfeng and try to finish the series now.”
Conditions were ideal for racing on Sunday, with winds in the 14 to 17 knot range, the southerly direction producing a reaching race course at the start. A wind shift turned the course into a true upwind/downwind for the last third of the race.
Team Brunel won the start with a fantastic time on distance run, hitting the line with speed and fully powered up.
Meanwhile, MAPFRE, with an eye on the leaderboard, stayed close to Dongfeng Race Team, luffing them up early and holding them back, the pair trailing the entire fleet early.
At the first mark, both tried to bully their way past Turn the Tide on Plastic, squeezing inside at the turn.
But while MAPFRE made a clean pass, Dongfeng Race Team didn’t have rights to push inside and received a penalty from the on-water Umpires, knocking them back behind the fleet.
At the front of the race, Team Brunel was trying desperately to hold on to its early lead, but a poor choice in sail selection meant the team was underpowered on the downwind leg and dropped all the way back from first to sixth.
Vestas 11th Hour Racing and team AkzoNobel were best placed to take advantage of the error and grabbed the leading two positions for the last lap of the course, with Charlie Enright’s team taking the win.
“We got off the start line okay and gave ourselves a chance,” Enright said. “On a day like today you’re never going to get it right 100% of the time, but the team that gets it right the most, wins. We’re happy with the result. Every time the start gun goes off it’s a chance to prove ourselves.”
The second place finish for Simeon Tienpont’s AkzoNobel team moves his crew into a podium position for the series, just two points ahead of Team Brunel.
A fourth place finish on Sunday allowed Dee Caffari’s Turn the Tide on Plastic to close the gap with David Witt’s SHK/Scallywag to three points heading into the final race in The Hague on June 30.

Three teams tied for the lead as they prep for Leg 11 start


Three teams will start Leg 11 – the final 700 nautical mile sprint leg of the Volvo Ocean Race – in a virtual tie for the lead, setting up an epic, dramatic and unprecedented denouement.
After racing over 44,000 nautical miles around the world, two teams now sit tied at the top of the overall leaderboard on 65 points – MAPFRE and Team Brunel – with Dongfeng Race Team currently just one point behind them on 64.
However, if Dongfeng beats the other two in Leg 11, it means they will also be positioned to receive the bonus point for the shortest elapsed time around the world. This has effectively created a three-way tie that will only be settled by the result of this final leg.
The race around the world will now be decided by a 700-mile sprint around Denmark. Never in the 45-year history of the race has the competition been so close heading into the final leg.
There can only be one
“It’s amazing to see three boats on the same points,” said Charles Caudrelier, skipper of Dongfeng Race Team during the press conference on Wednesday. “I think one of these three teams deserve to win the race. Now it’s up to us to push harder to be ahead of these guys in The Hague. We know it’s going to be a big fight, it’s good for the race and we’re excited and ready to go.”
Xabi Fernández, the skipper of MAPFRE, has led the race for more stages than any other team. Now he’s pushing to bring victory to Spain for the first time in the history of the race.
“We are in an amazing situation now, we have three boats, equal points, one leg to go. I am very happy to be among these three boats and fighting,” Fernández said. “But we know that only one will win. We have one mission, we have to beat them.”
Bouwe Bekking’s Team Brunel has already made a tremendous comeback from being in sixth place in Auckland to now having the overall title within their reach, if only they can keep up their recent form.
“We’re in the flow,” Bekking said, brimming with confidence. “If you look at the leaderboard, we’re going faster on every leg. Last leg we found some new gears and I think that’s a good thing. And I think we have ended up with a team that we’re really happy with. Last but not least, I’m sailing in my home waters. I’ve lived in Denmark for more than 25 years. And of course the place where we finish, I’ve grown up over there. We have all the ingredients to win the race.”
Further down the leaderboard, Dee Caffari’s Turn the Tide on Plastic, has pulled into a position to overhaul David Witt’s SHK/Scallywag, with just one point separating the pair in sixth and seventh place.
“It would be huge to get past them,” she said. “For a team coming in late, with a young, inexperienced crew, everyone had written us off completely. But we’ve been much more competitive than everyone thought we would be in our sailing, and to not finish at the bottom would be the cherry on the cake for our team. It would be a huge achievement and I’d be very proud of them. But he (David) isn’t going to let us get it easily – I know that!!”
For Vestas 11th Hour Racing skipper Charlie Enright, his position on the leaderboard is locked in with a fifth place finish overall, not where he’d wanted to have finished after winning the first leg.
“Had things bounced a different way maybe we’d be talking about four boats at the top,” Enright said. “But we are where we are. We’ve grown stronger as a group and I probably have grown as an individual as well, given the adversity we’ve faced. I’ve learned a lot… I’m proud of our team and everything we’ve accomplished on the water in the face of adversity.”
The final leg brings the fleet into The Hague and with two Dutch skippers in the race, the reception is expected to be epic.
“What we can expect in The Hague is something we’ve never seen before in the race, even going back to the Whitbread,” said team AkzoNobel’s Simeon Tienpont. “There might be up to one-million visitors expected in that week and I think that shows what kind of event this is in the sporting world and especially in The Netherlands.”
With the final leg to determine the winner just 24-hours away, SHK/Scallywag skipper David Witt was doubling down on a prediction he first made in Cardiff: "That’s how confident I am Bouwe is going to win.”
How to follow the start of Leg 11 - the epic winner-take-all final leg of the race:
Racing starts at 1400 local time (1200 UTC), on Thursday 21 June.
On the website: 
Head to www.volvooceanrace.com to catch a livestream of the action from 1345 local time (1145 UTC). A post race story summarising the action and with quotes from the skippers will be posted shortly after racing has finished.
Check out Facebook Live: 
We'll go live at 1345 local time (1145 UTC). You can go to our page to schedule a reminder so you don't miss it.
Join the conversation on Twitter: 
Send us tweet on hashtag #volvooceanrace. We'll be live-tweeting the action, as it happens. Check it out as we share the best content from the teams, stakeholders and fans on our feed.
Join us on our live blog: 
We'll be blogging all the moves, previews and news from the racetrack on our live blog, including the best of clips and social content, from 1330 local time (1130 UTC). You can find it at www.volvooceanrace.com under the 'Racing' section.
Download the app: 
It's full of great content and fits on your mobile phone. Why wouldn't you want the official Volvo Ocean Race app? Head to the App Store or Google Play to download it. It's called Volvo Ocean Race.
Come down to the Race Village: 
We’ve got a fantastic Race Village in Gothenburg, including the Volvo Ocean Race Boatyard facility, the Volvo Pavilion and Volvo Ocean Race Globe as well as the team bases. The Village is jam-packed full of interactive elements, innovative structures and loads of exciting things to do.

Volvo Ocean Race Overall Points Leaderboard 

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

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