The Ocean Race: The big first question heading into Leg 3 from Cape Town, South Africa to Itajai, Brazil

The longest stage in the 50-year history of The Ocean Race gets underway on Sunday as the racers get set to go 12,750 nautical miles from Cape Town in South Africa to Itajai in Brazil.

But the big question is do the teams stay close to the shore going past the Cape of Good Hope, or head further south or southwest looking for bigger breeze and the first of the westerlies east towards Australia.

Ocean Race weather consultant Christian Dumard said: “The boats could go upwind and go quite close to the Cape of Good Hope, but some could reach off to the southwest and go and get the windshift (south-east to southwest) in the high pressure system.

“They will not like having a negative VMG, but if one or two boats go southwest, the others could follow.”

Dumard says the early stages will be about getting south into the westerly winds that swirl through the Southern Ocean which will likely make for choppy conditions for the IMOCA crews.

“If we look in the longer term, there is a low pressure system on 2 and 3 of March,” Dumard said.

“The position of this low pressure, and how deep it will be, still varies quite a bit, depending on the models. For now, the idea is to get south and into the westerlies as soon as possible.

“If the low moves further south than expected, then there could be other options to go north of the low – for me, it looks more likely to be the southern option, but the game is still open and it could still change.”

Dumard believes Itajai could be “a lottery”.

He added: “At Itajai, you can have light winds, thunderstorms, rain squalls, anything can happen on the way to the finish.”

Race director Phil Lawrence says the organisers are keeping an eye on iceberg activity with the leg to feature an ice exclusion zone to prevent IMOCAs from being severely damaged.

“Whilst the leg is running, we will be carrying out further scans of the Pacific, and it is highly likely that we will make adjustments to the ice limit as necessary,” he said.

“Either moving it up, if we identify risk, or moving it down if we see that it is safe.

“At the moment, there is an unusual situation in the eastern Pacific, where there is a lot of ice activity quite far north, so our present limit has got quite a bulge in its profile.

“But we will do some more scans and maybe we can bring it further south in the weeks to come.”

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