'The pinnacle of The Ocean Race' - Teams wait for daunting Leg 3 challenge ahead of Sunday start

Leg 3 of the Ocean Race is the longest ever since the competition’s inception, and when it kicks off, 11th Hour’s skipper Charlie Enright is aware of the task ahead.

Enright said: “When the course for this race was announced, everybody keyed in on this leg pretty quickly as the big one. You know, it's going to be somewhere between 30 to 40 days.”

The Southern Ocean brings with it cold weather and the potential threat of icebergs that must be tracked on radar.

On the other hand, the strong winds and huge waves can make for quick, if difficult, sailing.

“The south can be unbelievable,” explained Enright. “I mean, it's big westerly winds with no leeward mark, a sailor's dream and you get to go downwind forever. But it's also a pretty treacherous part of the world. In the two previous editions of the race we’ve been either side of that. In 2014/15 we were a group of young guys and to find ourselves leading the fleet around Cape Horn was a magical moment. But in the next edition of the race we dropped a rig about 50 miles after going around Cape Horn. So the Southern Ocean can give and it can also take away.”

Enright’s peer, Biotherm skipper Paul Meihat, said Leg 3 was a key part of his recruiting drive ahead of the start of the whole endeavour.

He said: “When I announced the project and said I was looking for crew, they all asked to do this leg. This is the leg that everybody - the public, the journalists - all speak about because it's almost half of the race in terms of miles, it’s the longest in the history of this race. So, yes, it's a big one.

"But we mustn’t forget that we are going to have 10 [scoring] coefficients. This is a big part of the race, but we must focus not just on this leg but about The Ocean Race as a whole. Which is why the most important objective is to be in Itajaí to be able to finish the race.”

Kevin Escoffier of Team Holcim PRB and Benjamin Dutreux of GUYOT environment remain confident.

“I am very happy with the beginning of the race, even if the leaderboard doesn’t show that,” said Dutreux

“The scoreboard, it’s only numbers, and what I feel is that the level is very high and very close in the fleet. We have a fight with the other boats, and our points are not good, but I’m very happy with the fight and effort we put into sailing the boat, and that is the most important factor. I feel we are making good progress, and I’m looking forward to getting back on board and fighting for 20 per cent of the race on this crazy leg.”

Escoffier, however would have preferred more downtime, saying: “We had some rest, but not enough, in Cape Town. I would have like to spend more time here, and for the shore crew it has been difficult getting the boat ready in time for the next leg. There is still plenty of race to come. Like Paul [Meilhat] said, the most important thing is to finish in Itajaí. When we started in Alicante in January, we were already pushing the boat to 100 per cent of what we thought we could do, maybe more.

£I don’t know if we are pushing too hard on the boat. I think it was pretty easy in the Atlantic, because we have references from other experiences in the Atlantic. For the next leg going into the Southern Ocean it will be completely different. We have to find a new [way] of setting up the boat, to find a good average speed without pushing the boat too much. With Team Holcim PRB we have never done 30 days in a row at sea. It’s the unknown, but we’re looking forward to it.”

Team Malizia’s Boris Herrmann has a boat built with this leg in mind. “You can’t build a boat that’s good for all kinds of wind and wave conditions,” said the skipper. “But downwind in strong conditions is what we and (our designers) VPLP designed this boat for. I hope we can take advantage of this on Leg 3 and prove that the boat is good for such conditions in the Southern Ocean.

“What we are about to do, I think it is really the pinnacle of The Ocean Race this time and very different from the other legs. It’s almost a different type of yachting or racing. In the Atlantic we can be used to do really very close racing, to be very focused on performance all the time. But going into the Southern Ocean is also a big adventure.

“If we need rescuing, it can take 10 days for a warship to get to these regions to be able to help you. We are thousands of kilometres away from the nearest land. We're really on our own.”