15.02.2006
Huge losses, massive gains
Overnight, there have been huge losses and massive gains in the closing stages of leg three of the Volvo Ocean Race. At 0400 GMT this morning the entire fleet was still losing miles to ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson), who held a comfortable 32 nautical mile lead over the Spanish entry, movistar (Bouwe Bekking).
For Ericsson Racing Team (Neal McDonald) who slipped a further 40 miles back and trailed the leader by 175 miles, the mental pressure onboard this boat was almost unbearable.
“This race tests many facets of your personality,” wrote navigator Steve Hayles. “Being thrown around continuously, getting cold and wet with not enough sleep or food: all easily understood and very hard on the body, but the mental stress is something that is harder to describe and often much harder to deal with than the physical discomfort.”
Steve is the man onboard who has to break the news to the rest of the crew every six hours, when the latest position report is received. “It’s not easy being the continual bearer of bad news. We have taken the news without any dropping of our heads and we all reindex focussed on the last 120 miles of the race course.”
By 1000 GMT today, everything had changed. ABN AMRO ONE and movistar were neck and neck, but the wind died as they reached Cape Farewell, the northern most tip of New Zealand’s South Island, and both boats gybed again to round the Farewell Spit. They are now 32 miles from Stephen Island and Movistar is positioned to windward, sailing at twice the speed of ABN AMRO ONE.
The rest of the fleet have made massive gains between 0400 and 1000 GMT this morning as the leaders sailed in to the light breeze. Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) gained 52 miles and set a course midway between movistar to windward and ABN AMRO ONE to leeward. Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) gained 79 miles and is now only 16 miles behind ABN AMRO ONE, while fifth placed ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) made up 83 miles, the biggest gain of all, and is trying to cut the corner to Stephens Island, sailing close to the Farewell Spit.
For once, Ericsson Racing Team, are the winners. They still have 22 knots of breeze which will bring them to Cape Farewell swiftly, gaining them 74 miles.
As night falls in New Zealand, the wind will die almost completely and the prospect of a complete park-up and consequently a re-start of the race is very likely.
LEG THREE DAY 4, 15.2.06, 1000 GMT POSITION REPORT
YACHT
Latitude
Longitude
DTF
SMG
24 Hour Run
24 Hour Speed
DTL
DTLC
PTLPS
POP
OVERALL
ETA
1
ABN1
40 23.92S
173 28.92E
00092
05.8
384
16.0
00000
+00000
7.0
39.5
1
15/02/06 20:10:42
2
MOVI
40 22.78S
173 29.81E
00092
11.2
414
17.3
00000
+00032
6.0
24.0
3
15/02/06 20:11:31
3
POTC
40 24.03S
173 07.18E
00107
14.4
424
17.7
00015
+00052
5.0
21.5
4
15/02/06 21:48:04
4
BRA1
40 24.12S
172 51.36E
00118
18.5
426
17.7
00026
+00079
4.0
20.0
5
15/02/06 23:03:33
5
ABN2
40 28.97S
172 45.55E
00121
19.1
426
17.7
00029
+00083
3.0
28.0
2
15/02/06 23:24:05
6
ERIC
40 37.92S
171 10.79E
00193
17.8
370
15.4
00101
+00074
2.0
16.5
6
16/02/06 07:22:41
ABN1 ABN AMRO ONE
ABN2 ABN AMRO TWO
BRA1 Brasil 1
ERIC Ericsson Racing Team
MOVI movistar
POTC Pirates of the Caribbean
DTF: distance to finish, SMG: Speed made good, DTL: distance to leader,
DTLC: distance to leader change; the difference between the distance from the boat to the leader taken at the time of the last six hour poll, and the distance from the boat to the leader at the previous poll
PLPTS: projected leg points
PTP: projected overall points
OVERALL: projected position in race overall if yacht indextains current position
Lizzie Green Press Officer at race headquarters:
Tel: +44 1489 554 832, Mob: +44 7801 185 320
Email: lizzie.green@volvooceanrace.org
Sophie Luther Press Assistant at race headquarters
Mob: +44 7956 285548 email: sophie.luther@volvooceanrace.org
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