VOR has started!

The VolvoOceanRace as well as its Virtual player VORG has started, yesterday, 5th November 2011 at 13:00 GMT. 

Sanya Lan during the Start in Alicante. 

Strong winds accompanied the Start of the VOR in Alicante. First a circuit around  some buoys in front of Alicante Beach had to be sailed. 

In the strong winds, the teams had to work hard and  were struggling at times. Camper was the fastest around and  could as the first boat set sail to  Cape Town. The winds made  speeds upto 22+kts (as reported) possible and water was splashing all around.

During the night the first casualty happened already, Azzam the Abu Dhabi boat lost her mast, broken in 3 places. The crew is luckily unharmed and the boat has suspended the Sailing race and motoring back to Alicante to replace the mast. 

In the VORG it looks that many boats sailed away properly but also here some casualties as I read in news media that many sailors were not able to log-in. Gradually more and more joined and now I see already 46000+ boats participating. 

The boats are following the spanish coast and try not to loose too much height in the Western winds. 

Now sailing towards the Strait of Gibraltar ,which the first boats will pass later today. 

I have to look more in detail, but for now it looks like the VORG boats are sailing  faster than the real VOR boats :)

I am recovering from a bad nigt, where I could not make the required heading change and lost too much height. Also I will sail with the  basic sails only and thus  will loose out considerable speed over the boats that purchase extra sails and extra energy, most likely to use their engine.

For the route see the Tab Route above,

In the tab Progress Map I will try to indicate the daily position of my boat Paradise and of the 1st of the real VOR boats. On top of that I will  follow my boat sailing in LiveSkipper , just for comparison.