Volvo Ocean Race

After more than a thousand miles of racing on the second stage of Leg 3, it is still anyone’s race as the leaders close in on Pulau We island at the entrance to the infamous Malacca Strait.

Race fans can follow the action live via from this morning on volvooceanrace.com via our Live Tracker which will be updated every 60 seconds while the boats are in the Malacca Strait.

Just go to the regular tracker page via the Race Data tab and press the ‘Live’ button for the enhanced tracker.

Overnight there were winners and losers as the fleet battled with highly unpredictable localised weather systems triggered by large clouds on the approach to Sumatra.

During the hours of darkness Team Telefónica continued to benefit from their inspired northerly positioning of a few days ago which powered them into the narrowest of leads at the 1900 UTC position report last night.

Second-placed CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand had been praying for a wind to shift to the right to help them to close out the charging blue boat, but the shift never came and by 0400 UTC Telefónica had eked out a two nautical mile (nm) lead.

By 0700 UTC this morning that lead was down to 1.5 nm as a determined CAMPER took the fight back to Telefónica.

CAMPER co-skipper Stuart Bannatyne’s comment sums up the weather situation and the intense nature of the scrap for the lead:

“The racing is still locked tight so there is no room for error and you have to be on your game,” he said. “But it's hard going, it's more puffy out here than a 1970s perm, and things aren’t going to get any easier once we reach the Malacca Strait.”

In third place, PUMA Ocean Racing Powered by BERG who had previously led for much of the leg, were still very much in contention less than five nautical miles off the lead.

PUMA Media Crew Member (MCM) Amory Ross described the four-way scramble at the head of the fleet. “We have to fend off Groupama and CAMPER to the south, and not lose touch of Telefónica to the north,” he said. “The guys from Spain (Telefónica) seemingly cannot put a foot wrong and they’ve been consistently extending all day long."

Fourth-placed Groupama sailing team suffered the worst from the turbulent conditions overnight, dropping to 12 nm behind the leaders.

Groupama MCM Yann Riou explained how two encounters with squally clouds had cost the French team dearly. “When the first squall arrived the wind picked up and we had to bear away to take the foresail down,” he said. “We headed south for some long minutes. Then the wind suddenly dropped to zero and stopped us for 15 minutes.

“Then later the same again. This time, we’re anticipating it by hoisting the J4, which allows us to take the J1 down without bearing away. But at the end of the day, same punishment! The wind dropped down to zero and stopped us for almost half an hour.

“The position report comes out: bombshell. Reading the speeds and headings of the fleet, Groupama seems to have been the only boat affected by these squalls.”

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and Team Sanya made small gains overnight and certainly cannot be dismissed given the reputation for the Malacca Strait to disrupt the pecking order.