Volvo Ocean Race NZ Stopover

The Volvo Ocean Race’s Auckland stopover is always one of the circuit’s favorites, for fans and sailors alike, and this year’s was no different. It all started on a perfect summer Saturday night, February 28, as MAPFRE edged out Abu Dhabi and Dongfeng to the finish, with the top three boats finishing within a span of eight minutes after more than 20 days at sea and nearly 6,000 miles of racing from Sanya, China. The entire fleet finished within seven hours of one another. With the ‘City of Sails’ pumping since that epic Saturday night, the VOR rolled out the red carpet for sailing fans at Auckland’s centrally-located Viaduct Harbour.

Halfway around the world and just before rounding Cape Horn, the Auckland stopover is the most intensive boat-service stopover since the race’s start. The fleet of VO 65s were completely torn apart and put back together in an absolutely staggering display of boat-building prowess and around-the-clock passion. New Zealand is known as being a nation of boat builders, and with the Southern Spars headquarters right down the street, the fleet will leave Auckland in top form having now sailed halfway around the world and with the most challenging leg to Cape Horn just around the corner.

Certainly the biggest story of the Auckland stopover is that of the menacing Cyclone Pam which first battered Vanuatu and then took aim on New Zealand’s North Island; perhaps the most gnarly cyclone to hone in on Aotearoa in more than a decade. Race director Knut Frostad made a common-sense decision to delay the start for three days until Wednesday morning. Fortunately the storm weakened when it hit colder waters and mostly spared Auckland, creating little more than an inconvenience.

On Saturday, the all-female crew of SCA won the in-port race (their second win). While Dongfeng adds Irish rockstar Damian Foxall, MAPFRE gets Spanish skipper Iker Martínez back, SCA adds American sailor Sara Hastreiter, and former Oracle Team USA trimmer Dirk de Ridder from the Netherlands makes his comeback after the king-post cheating fiasco to bolster Team Brunel’s crew list on this most challenging leg around Cape Horn to Itajaí, Brazil.

The cyclone-delayed race start will occur on Wednesday, March 18, at 9:00 a.m. local time (1:00 p.m. Tuesday PDT).