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24 May 2012
Exiting the Gulf Stream into flatter water
After five days of racing from Charleston, the Global Ocean Race (GOR) Class40s are out of the Gulf Stream and heading deeper into the North Atlantic led by Conrad Colman and Scott Cavanough with Cessna Citation holding an eight mile lead over Marco Nannini and Sergio Frattaruolo on Financial Crisis in second place – an 11-mile gain in 24 hours by the Italian-Slovak pursuers. Trailing Financial Crisis by 91 miles at 15:00 GMT on Thursday, Phillippa Hutton-Squire and Nick Leggatt in third with the South African Class40 Phesheya-Racing have increased their separation over Nico and Frans Budel on Sec. Hayai following a tack north by the Dutch duo which took the team into light airs.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Budels were polling the best speed averages in the fleet and the duo were totally focussed: “I don’t even know what day of the week it is as our life is now completely dominated on the position schedules,” said Frans Budel of the three-hourly updates. “It’s been a good day so far and we picked up some stable, ten-knot breeze, but where it has come from we have no idea as it doesn’t appear on the GRIB files and we are jumping from cloud to cloud to make the most of it,” he reported.
However, at 16:00 on Wednesday, the distrust of the downloaded weather files lead to a tack: “Navigation has become a real gamble right now. Should we go right, left, or keep going straight?” wondered Frans Budel. “For now, we’re going to stick with the benefits of the Gulf Stream and keep in the current, so we’ve tacked north, but I don’t know yet how long we’ll stick with it.” By early Thursday morning after nine hours heading north, speeds on Sec. Hayai were sub-four knots and the Dutch duo tacked again, heading away from the windless wall at 37N.
On Thursday afternoon, Frans Budel was back in contact: “Our idea of going north yesterday wasn’t the best,” he admits. “We lost many miles and hopefully we can win them back somewhere,” he adds of the loss of 54 miles to Phesheya-Racing.
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