A huge wave washes down the deck of Green Dragon in the Southern Ocean (Guo Chuan/Green Dragon)
Guo Chan / Green Dragon
The fleet departed from Qingdao at 1300hrs local time on Saturday 14 February for leg 5 to Rio De Janeiro.
Leg 5 was won by Ericsson 3 at 10:37 GMT, 26 March 2009 after 40 days, 23 hours and 26 minutes of sailing
The Leg Preview
The leg is a long slog and the longest of the race at 12,300 nautical miles. The northerlies that shriek down the Yellow Sea at that time of year will quickly carry the fleet back down and into the north-east Trade Winds.
Once there, the leg strategy becomes a replica of leg one – cross the Doldrums, pick up the south-east trades, skirt the subtropical high and head south into the path of the eastbound depressions rolling across the Southern Ocean. But in comparison to the Atlantic, three factors crank the difficulty on this leg.
First, there is an awful lot more land in the way, and most of it lies in the Doldrums. The island chains that string across the Pacific from Papua New Guinea eastwards will extract a high price from anyone on the wrong side of them. Second, once the fleet is in the Southern Ocean, the Pacific is a lot bigger than the Atlantic, and it’s a long way to Cape Horn. Third, Cape Horn isn’t the finish. There are more than two thousand nautical miles to go, dodging Pamperos, the storms coming down off the Andes, then skirting the South Atlantic High and hoping the Trade Winds are set up far enough south to make it an easy finish. Or not.
Waypoints
Two waypoints (or scoring gates) are planned for this leg, at Latitude 36 degrees south and at Cape Horn. The Race Director will confirm the positions prior to the start of the leg. Each waypoint is worth half the points of the leg, i.e. the first boat through the scoring gate will receive 4 points, the second 3 points etc, while the first boat to cross the finish line in Rio de Janeiro receives 8 points for the win.
Useful Links
Download the Leg 5 crew list (PDF 79kb).