IN BRIEF:
* TEAM COWES IN 6TH PLACE 47 MILES BEHIND VMI, VMI 57 MILES BEHIND PRB... Skippers Nick Moloney and Sam Davies are driving TEAM COWES hard: "boatspeed is 16 knots right now, big sails up and we're sending team cowes as fast as we can..." and the results are showing as she closes the gap from 63 miles at 0500 this morning to 47 miles at 0900 positions. With the potential for winds to become variable over the last stretch of the race course the battle for 4th, 5th and 6th place may not be over...
* VIRBAC GIVES CONVINCING PERFORMANCE...skippers Jean-Pierre Dick and Nicolas Abiven racing the new Farr Design Virbac sailed a flawless tactical race, optimising their boats peformance in the fast conditions to win the Open 60 class crossing the finish line off Salvador de Bahia at 0518GMT this morning. Virbac completed the 4,340 mile course in 16 days, 15 hours, 18 mins and 5 seconds averaging a boat speed of 10.87 knots. The duo just missed out on the existing Open 60 record set by Sill two years ago by just a couple of hours. Considering the strong upwind conditions of the first 8 days this was an impressive time...
* TITANIC BATTLE FOR 2ND PLACE BETWEEN SILL & ECOVER...with only 30 miles reindexing Sill and Ecover are neck and neck racing to the line. Sill skippers Roland Jourdain and Alex Thomson took the advantage early this morning putting their big spinnaker to good effect...with no spinnakers left on board Ecover, Mike Golding and Brian Thompson struggled to keep pace. But now the wind is upwind all the way to the line...it will be a nerve-wracking time for the skippers and their shore teams waiting in Brazil...
* FORECAST...winds forecast around 14-16 knots today from the south-east, more south later with some rain activity along the coast. Tomorrow morning potential for big rain cloud activity to approach Salvador from offshore bringing possibility of light and variable conditions close to the finish.
EMAIL LOG FROM TEAM COWES 0500GMT 18.11.03 - SAM DAVIES:
well, this will be my last mail from on board team cowes, as this time tomorrow we should be very nearly finished.
what a race - fantastic to be so close to prb and vmi all the way. we haven't given up hope of catching vmi yet, although it is looking pretty hard task right now, as we have had some head winds tonight that they didn't get and now we are 65 miles behind. if there are some light winds tomorrow (as forecast) it might give us a chance......
anyway, boatspeed is 16 knots right now, big sails up and we're sending team cowes as fast as we can to the land of the caipharinha.
sam x
TOP 10 OPEN 60 POSITIONS AT 0900GMT 18.11.03:
Pstn/Boat Name/Long/Lat/Speed/Course/DTF/DTL
1 VIRBAC / 0.0 / 0.0
2 SILL / 12 58.24' S / 38 02.16' W / 10.5 / 229 / 32.1 / 0.0
3 ECOVER / 12 59.64' S / 37 59.88' W / 12.0 / 224 33.8 / 1.8
4 PRB / 12 01.76' S / 36 47.56' W / 11.7 / 228 / 121.1 / 89.0
5 VMI / 11 31.60' S / 35 58.40' W / 14.3 / 214 / 178.3 / 146.2
6 TEAM COWES / 10 43.92' S / 35 11.80' W / 12.1 / 225 / 242.6 / 210.5
7 CARREFOUR PREVENTION / 7 30.68' S / 34 06.40' W / 11.9 / 205 / 427.2 / 395.1
8 ARCELOR-DUNKERQUE / 0 55.76' S / 28 32.68' W / 10.8 / 217 / 942.7 / 910.6
9 GARNIER / 2 39.56' N / 29 41.64' W / 5.2 / 209 / 1091.7 / 1059.6
10 LOIRE ATLANTIQUE / 2 16.72' N / 26 21.40' W / 9.1 / 214 / 1174.9 / 1142.8
PERFORMANCE PARTNER OF THE DAY : SONY
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