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VOR Stage 6: Welcome back

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Six VO 65 boats left Hong Kong port on Tuesday to battle it out in the 6,000-mile race to New Zealand's Auckland as part of Round 6 of the Volvo Ocean Race. The regatta fleet has survived a fairly calm start, strong winds and high waves in the South China Sea for two days, and is now heading in the opposite direction from the finish line.

Although the start was moved to early morning to avoid the forecasted violent storms, after a few miles from shore the winds picked up from 10 knots to 30.

Team Brunel, who had been at the bottom of the standings since the start of the circumnavigation, managed to take the lead almost immediately and hold it for the first 24 hours of the race.

During this time, the crew led by Bouwe Bekking had to face an unexpected obstacle.

«We caught the wind and were going very well. Soon we were at the head of the fleet, but then suddenly slowed down a lot. In a blink of an eye we lost half a mile; the reason was a huge plastic bag on the rudder»," said Bekking.

Coincidentally, around the same time, the Turn the Tide on Plastic crew ran into exactly the same problem. In their case, a plastic bag got wrapped around the fin on the bulwark, which also temporarily slowed the boat.

Both crews successfully got rid of the intrusive gifts of civilization and returned to the race at full speed.

It is now difficult to determine the absolute leader of the regatta - all six boats are moving away from the coveted Auckland area to avoid the area of weak winds. That said, the competitors have split into two groups.

The Scallwag and AkzoNobel crews split from the regatta fleet and took a steep northerly - perpendicular to the direct route to New Zealand - as soon as they passed the island of Taiwan. The rest of the boats, after covering about two hundred miles more, followed suit to catch more favorable weather conditions to traverse the equatorial lull zone.

So far, the southern group's position is more advantageous with 15-20 knots of wind while the two isolated boats have to make do with 7-10 knots. But only time will tell whose strategy ended up being the right one.

The sixth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2017/18 will be a mirror image of the fourth, with teams once again needing to cross the South China Sea, the Philippines and a tricky stretch of tiny islands and reefs in Micronesia. On top of that, it's a combination of choppy weather, from sudden storms to stagnant equatorial calm.

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