Main Page | Newsletter | Sailing calendar | America's Cup | Glossary

Excitement mounts on Volvo boats

Rough weather is expected as the crews cross the remote Southern Ocean

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Excitement is mounting on the Volvo Ocean Race boats as they head for a cold front in the Southern Ocean.

All eight of the yachts have passed latitude 50 degrees south, having left New Zealand on Sunday for the fourth leg of the round-the-world race.

They are due to reach Rio by February 19.

Expectations are now high from the navigators that the change of wind direction will come in the next 12 hours, the official race web site said on Thursday.

News Corp has taken the lead to the east of the fleet and is sailing a relatively lower course making even more distance towards the east, along with Assa Abloy.

QUICKVOTE Can Illbruck keep ahead of the fleet in the fourth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race? Yes No View Results

Assa Abloy won the third leg, from Sydney to Auckland, but Illbruck is the overall race leader with six legs remaining.

Djuice Dragon skipper Knut Frostad said excitement was mounting as the fleet approached a cold front.

"It's pretty exiting onboard right now. The last ten hours the wind has slowly been building, knot by knot, as we are fast approaching a big mother of cold fronts flying in from the west.

"The front is doing about 35 knots right now. We are doing 18-20 knots going south, and very soon we will meet," he wrote in an email.

"The Southern Ocean is certainly like no other place on earth. It's colder, darker, greyer, more fog and very, very wet. It's so wet in the air that your hair is wet after fifteen minutes, and it's not raining right now," he added.

Crew on the standby watch have already started to sleep in their oilskins, "as they need to be on deck quickly when things are happening."

Kevin Shoebridge of Tyco said the boat lost 5 miles after suffering through a light period of wind for 2 hours. An 8-ft piece of kelp around the keel also slowed it down.

However, he said the wind was slowly increasing -- "long may it continue."

"Plenty of good eating and sleeping conditions at present; we are making the most of it before things become a little more exciting and tense. The fleet is unbelievably close at present and it will be interesting to see the strategies [of the boats] unfold over the next few days," Shoebridge said.

Illbruck also suffered from some weed tangling with the boat, but Jamie Gale dived into the cold water to remove it, fellow crew member Stu Bannatyne said.

A shark, about 1 metre long, became caught around the propeller shrut of Amer Sports One, prompting Stefano Rizzi to dive below to remove it.

"We thought it was a shark, but didn't know for sure because it was dark.," skipper Grant Dalton said.

"We stopped the boat and Stefano jumped in to take a look," said Dalton, who was disappointed at losing speed at such a vital time in the race.

With wind speeds increasing and temperatures dropping, clothing will soon be piled on.

Amer Sport One's Paul Cayard wrote in an e-mail that a southerly front was due on Thursday. "It will be cold in 30 hours. We are expecting 30 knots from 200 deg, that is straight off the ice."

Crews will wear survival suits, gloves, "industrial strength balaclava, and a few pairs of socks," Cayard said.

"The harness will be the top layer just to make sure we don't get squirted off the deck like cigarette butts getting hosed off the sidewalk in front of a Paris cafe."