15.02.2006
Final strait
As leg three of the Volvo Ocean Race comes to a nail biting end, Bouwe Bekking and his crew on movistar has stolen ABN AMRO ONE’s (Mike Sanderson) top spot as the wind drops in Cook Strait. But will they be able to keep it up until the finish in Wellington, or will Kiwi Mike Sanderson celebrate a third offshore win in his home country? The answer is predicted to come by 2100 GMT tonight.
Massive gains were made in the past 12 hours by all the fleet except ABN AMRO ONE as they had reached Cape Farewell on the north western tip of New Zealand’s South Island and the fickle breeze. At 0400 GMT movistar was 32 miles behind the Dutch yacht, by 1000 GMT they were neck and neck and at 1300 they had a slim lead of one nautical mile. They are now level pegging with just 49 miles to go to the finish line.
Bouwe spoke earlier about finally managing to get into his sleeping bag, but was of course still fully dressed in his wet weather gear, ready for any eventuality like all the crew. He described the conditions that brought him up and past ABN AMRO ONE today. “We had some fantastic sailing last night, not so much breeze, but big swells, which are coming from a perfect direction, so we are surfing them down all the time. Everybody is working hard, to get the maximum out of movistar.”
The yachts have all been gybing downwind trying different tactics to make gains on their rivals. It is currently early morning in Cook Strait and as dawn approaches, the tide will change and the fleet will slow, causing more bunching.
Paul Cayard currently in third place on Pirates of the Caribbean explained the situation that occurred in the last few dark hours and how the future looks:
“Things have tightened up as we rounded Cape Farewell and all slowed down considerably due to light winds on the north side of the south island with the prevailing southerly gradient. We never came to a complete stop but had to make one drastic gybe out away from land to escape a hole right along the coast. Sailing along coast lines at night is always tricky. Hard to know if there will be "night breeze" which is a wind that blows out offshore at night or whether it will be flat calm along a shore. We have stayed offshore a bit, 10 miles plus, just to try to insure that we don't get becalmed. So far, so good. We have been moving the whole time.
“Movistar caught ABN AMRO ONE shortly after rounding Cape Farewell. Maybe ABN AMRO ONE got too close to the land at Cape Farewell and fell into a real light spot. We definitely noticed more pressure offshore there. Always tricky to know how tight to cut the corner.
“The forecast for the next 12 hours is for light winds slowly shifting from the southeast to the north and dropping from nine knots which we currently have and then to four knots by 0000 UTC. If that is correct, it will be a slow last 60 miles.
But that is just a forecast.”
Ericsson (Neal McDonald) who has been unlucky in this leg has finally been blessed with more wind than the rest of the fleet cutting down their deficit to the leaders by 33 nautical miles in the past 12 hours. This was not enough to cheer them up, as Steve Hayles shows in his daily log. “When you look up the definition of painful in the dictionary I don't know what it says but I am very clear what it should say; "painful means being behind in a small fleet of Volvo 70's with the wind dying from behind"!”
LEG THREE DAY 4, 15.2.06, 1600 GMT POSITION REPORT
YACHT
Latitude
Longitude
DTF
SMG
24 Hour Run
24 Hour Speed
DTL
DTLC
PLPTS
POP
ETA
OVERALL
1
MOVI
40 45.88S
174 35.11E
00049
10.3
340
14.2
00000
+00000
7.0
7.0
15/02/06 21:03:41
3
2
ABN1
40 45.78S
174 33.50E
00049
10.3
316
13.2
00000
+00001
6.0
6.0
15/02/06 21:04:43
1
3
POTC
40 34.33S
174 08.38E
00065
09.6
355
14.8
00016
+00001
5.0
5.0
15/02/06 23:10:56
4
4
BRA1
40 25.49S
173 47.53E
00081
08.0
368
15.3
00032
-00001
4.0
4.0
16/02/06 00:56:00
5
5
ABN2
40 27.92S
173 31.57E
00089
06.9
366
15.2
00040
+00000
3.0
3.0
16/02/06 01:45:06
2
6
ERIC
40 14.26S
172 58.44E
00117
09.1
369
15.4
00068
+00001
2.0
2.0
16/02/06 04:56:27
6
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
|
