Today has been a quiet day for the “movistar” team, and a meeting concerning the route that will be taken has been the only thing the team has had scheduled. Each onboard crew members has checked the area they are responsible for and the shore crew has finished all the last minute tunning . The boat  rests in the same dock  where it arrived, after earning a third place classification in the second leg of the race that started in Cape Town.

Thanks to the third position won in the last  In Port Race, “movistar” will be the third boat to leave the waterfront,. The Spanish team is scheduled to leave the waterfront area at 23:30 GMT, before heading to the Start Line.

When the team reaches New Zealand, the crew of the Spanish boat will have little time to rest before the start of the fourth leg, that will take them from Wellington to  Río de Janeiro. “Even should we consider the leg as an indepent one –notes Xabi Fernández, headsail trimmer for “movistar”–, we can think of the stop-over in Welligton as a “gate” for the course to Río. We are going to spend almost 48 hours there before we head on 6700 n.m. on a course that will take us from Wellington to Río de Janeiro –Brazil–”.

Pepe Ribes thinks about the difficulty of the leg: “It could be the hardest leg of this edition of the Volvo Ocean Race. It will be so short that we almost won't have enough time to rest before reaching Welligton. The entire crew will help with the manouvres and the watch system will run differently. After crossing the finish line, and given that we needn't repair anything, we'll still have only a couple of days to rest before facing the next leg –and it includes Cape Horn-. Should we need to repair something, we won't have the shore crew to help out. That would mean that we wouldn't be able to rest before heading to Brazil.

 A hard course

The boats will sail 40 n.m within Port Philip Bay before heading towards the start line, a 1,75 mile strait with currents that can sometimes reach 8 knots. After crossing that first obstacle, the fleet will head on to the Bass Strait before reaching the Tasman Sea. From there they'll head East to the Cook Strait, and shortly after the Volvo Open 70 will reach Wellington.