The seven-boat fleet of international teams competing in The Ocean Race Europe 2025 has made slow progress overnight in ultra-light Mediterranean winds along the Italian and French coastlines during their first night at sea on the race’s fifth and final offshore stage from Genova, Italy to Boka Bay in Montenegro.
Drifting conditions have prevailed since yesterday afternoon when the seven IMOCA crews lined up in close formation for the start of the 1,600-nautical mile passage which will see the fleet race down the western side of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia and pass south of Sicily before heading east to a virtual waypoint close to Greece and turning North to enter the Adriatic Sea on the way to Boka Bay.
The light winds have meant the yachts have made little progress to the south, instead pushing slowly west during the hours of darkness to pass towards Nice, France – the host city for the stopover between the race’s third and fourth legs – in search of cool northerly night time breezes draining off the land.
Other than a brief period around 2100 CEST last night when that land breeze saw the fleet accelerate to speeds over 10 knots at times, progress has remained painfully slow for all the teams. Every team made gains and losses at various times, as the crews swapped backwards and forwards between their Code Zero headsails and masthead spinnakers each time they sailed in and out of patches of stronger and lighter breeze.
“We’re kind of creeping down the coast here in little pockets of wind and it’s a bit like Wacky Races,” said Canada Ocean Racing – Be Water Positive co-skipper Pip Hare. “Sometimes you take off, sometimes you don’t – sometimes you go in a hole.
“It’s a thermal effect. It’s been really hot here and at night time the air cools and it gets heavier and it kind of tumbles down the valleys and out to sea. We are making the most of that effect.”
The IMOCA fleet’s low-speed progress was in stark contrast to life on board the high tech foiling boats when the breeze is up and the yachts are skimming at high speed across the tops of the waves with the crew tucked away in their enclosed cockpits.
“At least we are moving,” commented Nico Lunven aboard Team Holcim – PRB. “The fleet is not totally stopped and we are moving in the right direction, which is nice. It’s such different conditions to when you have some wind and you are locked inside the cockpit, with the boat doing 25 knots and plenty of water everywhere.”
Meanwhile, a clearing sky gave The Ocean Race Europe sailors the perfect view of last night’s ‘Blood Moon’ lunar eclipse – as the Earth passed directly between the sun and the moon, casting its shadow across the lunar surface.
“It’s beautiful and the eclipse is disappearing so you can see the moon appearing bit by bit,” described Holcim – PRB skipper Rosalin Kuiper (NED), gazing upwards. “It’s very pretty, very beautiful, and there are a lot of stars,” she said, before turning on her head torch to check once more on the trim of her boat’s headsail.
By early afternoon CEST on Monday, the fleet had compressed once again in a wind hole southeast of Nice. Paprec Arkéa showed as top team on the PredictWind tracker, but with a dozen miles separating the yachts as the entire fleet crawls down the coast, the Leg 5 leaderboard will remain unreliable until the arrival of the next bout of fresh breeze, which is expected to arrive this evening or overnight.
