A first Chinese victory
It was very important to them to win in Hong Kong, and the Chinese team Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag, skippered by Australian sailor David Witt, did just that. After 17 days 14 hours 30 minutes and 42 seconds at sea, the crew crossed the finish line of this 4th leg between Melbourne and Hong Kong (its home port), this Friday 19th January 2018 at 17:45 UTC (18:45 in France and 01:45 on site). A first for the crew flying the Chinese flag and a first Chinese stopover in the history of the crewed round-the-world race.
A victory all the more surprising in view of the results of Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag, who started quite late in this Volvo Ocean Race, on the previous stages: fifth in the first and third stages, sixth in the second. And on this leg, nothing was less safe either, as a week ago, it was at the tail end of the fleet that he was sailing at the moment when the seven VO65s were struggling to get out of a particularly tough Doldrums by heading north in search of some saving NE'ly winds.
"T ll teams need a little bit of confidence, I think one thing that is underestimated in sport is momentum, this win will certainly give us a lot of confidence. We're still learning and I think we're going to get better as the race goes on." commented David Witt shortly after the line was crossed.
It was thanks to a radical choice of option by cutting westwards and relying more on their feeling than on the weather charts that the British sailor Libby Greenhalgh, who set out for the first time on this leg which started on 2nd January from Melbourne, and the Australian skipper took the lead over the rest of the fleet shortly after passing the Solomon Islands. They then kept the lead of the fleet all the way to Hong Kong - despite the huge scare when one of the crew, Alex Gough, went overboard before being safely recovered 7 minutes later.
"We had a plan and we stuck to it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and this time it worked for us." commented after the arrival David Witt who, Thursday evening, 24 hours before the arrival, said:" We didn't always trust our routing software on this stage, but now we want to, because it tells us we're going to beat Vestas by an hour and a half. To the Scallywag fans: say a prayer for us tonight !"
With this victory, the Chinese team took eight points (seven plus a bonus) and made a good comeback in the overall classification, moving up from sixth to fourth place.
Withdrawal of the stage
It was Vestas 11th Hour Racing who should have crossed the finish line in second place, but the American-Danish crew led by Mark Towill (Charlie Enright's replacement on this leg) was the victim of a collision with a fishing boat 30 miles from the goal, forcing it to stop and finally retire to return to the engine. The collision was fatal for one of the crew members of the fishing vessel, who was taken to hospital by helicopter.
As a result, it was the Dongfeng Race Team that took second place, 2 hours 47 minutes and 40 seconds behind the winner of the day, a result that allows the boat flying the Chinese flag to climb to second place overall behind MAPFRE, expected on Saturday.
"It's not a bad operation," commented the skipper of the Dongfeng Race Team at the pontoon in Hong Kong. For me, this leg and the next one (actually the sixth leg towards Auckland) are dangerous, as we're going through areas where it's sometimes anything goes wrong, with a completely random crossing of the equator at this point. These are trap stages, MAPFRE was trapped, not us this time, so second on this stage is a good result. Obviously, we would have liked to win in China when we arrived home, like last time, it would have been magical, now it's the boat from Hong Kong that wins, that's good too. Now it's the boat from Hong Kong that's winning, which is good too. We're back up two points (on MAPFRE) and when you see the misfortunes of Vestas, you tell yourself that to win, you have to sail well, but also get through all these problems. We're still in the game, we're still on the podium."
The ranking of the 4 e Melbourne-Hong Kong stage (at 1 a.m., French time) :
- Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag (David Witt) 17d 14h 30m 42s
- Dongfeng Race Team (Charles Caudrelier) 17 d 17 h 18 min 22 s
- AkzoNobel (Simeon Tienpont) 17 d 21 h 6 min 16 s
- MAPFRE (Xabi Fernandez) still at sea
- Team Brunel (Bouwe Bekking) still at sea
- Turn the Tide on Plastic (Dee Caffari) still at sea
Withdrawal: Vestas 11th Hour Racing (Mark Towill)
The provisional general classification :
- MAPFRE 29 points (after the 3 e stage)
- Dongfeng Race Team 29 points
- 11 th Hour Racing jacket 23 points
- Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag 19 points
- Team Brunel 14 points (after the 3 e stage)
- Team AkzoNobel 14 points
- Turn the Tide on Plastic 9 points (after the 3 e stage)
