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25 May 2012
Waterspout drama for Phesheya-Racing
With the Global Ocean Race (GOR) Class40 fleet split in two and separated by 200 miles, the pair of leading boats, Cessna Citation and Financial Crisis have kept with the breeze and extended to the east as Phesheya-Racing and Sec. Hayai have rarely polled speed averages over five knots.
While Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire in third place on Phesheya-Racing were hit by a waterspout on Thursday afternoon, destroying their biggest spinnaker in a maelstrom of whirling wind and water, the South Africans have had to watch Nico and Frans Budel closing in with Sec. Hayai carrying slightly stronger wind and removing 40 miles from Hutton-Squire and Leggatt’s lead in the past 24 hours as the two boats fight to escape the light airs.
To the east, Conrad Colman and Scott Cavanough on Cessna Citation hold the lead, pulling away from Marco Nannini and Sergio Frattaruolo in second with Financial Crisis as the two boats sailed above a small low pressure system with the Kiwi-Australian duo extending their lead from eight miles to 35 miles in the past 24 hours and hitting speed averages over ten knots before headwinds arrived on Friday afternoon.
There’s been drama and damage on Phesheya-Racing for Leggatt and Hutton-Squire as they sailed downwind with their biggest spinnaker and full indexsail in 13 knots on Thursday. “The morale on board was excellent as we were catching Cessna and Financial Crisis,” explains Hutton-Squire who was off-watch sleeping when the boat suddenly heeled hard and she could hear the spinnaker flapping and snapping loudly as Leggatt shouted for help on deck. “As I sat up things started to fly across the cabin and as I was crawling out of bed I almost got hit by the first aid kit amongst other things as it came flying across the boat,” she reports.
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