11 February 2012
Perfect conditions as the fleet leader heads south-east for Cape Horn
Fortunes for the three Class40s still racing in Leg 3 of the double-handed Global Ocean Race (GOR) have shifted sideways in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Fleet leaders, Conrad Colman and Adrian Kuttel on Cessna Citation out ran a light-winds high pressure ridge and are likely to attach to the back of low pressure system as they head south-east towards Cape Horn in remarkably benign conditions. Meanwhile, Marco Nannini and Hugo Ramon holding second place with Financial Crisis ran straight into the light conditions at 50S as they squeezed round the southern waypoint of the bluQube Scoring Gate and to the north-west, Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire have finally found the long-awaited offwind sailing following an horrific night in boat breaking seas with Phesheya-Racing.
At 52S, the Kiwi-South African duo of Colman and Kuttel have been making steady progress on Cessna Citation having cleared the bluQube Scoring Gate: “For all the talk of the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, we are currently tootling along at eight knots in light breeze and sunshine and the reindexing miles to Cape Horn are forecast to be reasonably pleasant,” Colman confirmed early on Saturday morning. However, the team’s approach to the virtual gate had been a hard slog: “Adrian and I were finally able to crack off from the tight angles we had been sailing and make tracks under spinnaker,” he explains. “As the wind built we shifted from the big ‘Citation’ spinnaker to the smaller, tougher ‘Caravan’ high-wind spinnaker,” adds the 28 year-old Kiwi skipper. “Hunkered down in truck mode, it was fantastic to have Cessna back up to speed if only for a few position reports and as I saw that we would have a few more hours of favourable wind than Marco and Hugo on Financial Crisis, so with coffee in hand I pulled some long hours on the helm to help push home our advantage.”
In the 15:00 GMT position poll on Saturday, Cessna Citation had extended their lead to 247 miles. “For that invested effort we have now got our interest back as Financial Crisis has now been caught by the chasing ridge, so the elastic that connects us continues to stretch,” observes Colman. Currently sailing close to Point Nemo – the most geographically remote piece of water on the planet - Colman is feeling the physical isolation. “We are so far away from land right now that flight commander Dan Burbank and his five crew on the International Space Station are closer to solid ground right now than we are!” Indeed, as Burbank and his crew looped through the Pacific en route to Chile and onto the station’s north-easterly arc through the South Atlantic and into the Northern Hemisphere, they passed overhead of Cessna Citation at around 14:00 GMT and at an altitude of 218nm, the space ship was fractionally closer to Colman and Kuttel than Nannini and Ramon on Financial Crisis.
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