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27 May 2012
Finally, offwind sailing for the GOR fleet
The first eight days of the final leg of the Global Ocean Race (GOR) from Charleston to Les Sables d’Olonne have tested the four double-handed Class40s. The fleet crossed the start line in South Carolina and sailed directly into the teeth of a storm with conditions that some crews described as the worst in the entire circumnavigation. While the majority of the fleet opted to sail in the 50-mile wide corridor between the Gulf Stream and the coast of the USA, one team – Marco Nannini and Sergio Frattaruolo – headed directly into the current and took a battering in demanding conditions as the northerly wind and north-flowing current churned into a mass of steep, short seas, but the Italian-Slovak duo’s bold eastward course won Class40 Financial Crisis the lead.
Inshore, conditions were barely any better and the group of three Class40s – Cessna Citation, Phesheya-Racing and Sec. Hayai – beat northwards, finally peeling away from the coast at Cape Hatteras and entering the Gulf Stream as the storm abated. Nannini and Frattaruolo held onto the lead for four days, but Conrad Colman and Scott Cavanough were unstoppable with their Akilaria RC2 Cessna Citation and took pole position with a split beginning to develop with the two leading boats pulling away as Phillippa Hutton-Squire and Nick Leggatt with Phesheya-Racing in third and the Dutch father-and-son duo of Nico and Frans Budel on board Sec. Hayai in fourth battled with light and variable headwinds as the fleet raced through the Gulf Stream.
At 12:00 GMT on Sunday, the Budels were back up to speed as the entire fleet raced off the wind with Sec. Hayai averaging 11 knots and digging into the 145-mile lead built by Phesheya-Racing as the Dutch Class40 reindexed near-static on Friday and Saturday. Meanwhile, 168 miles ahead of the South Africans, Nannini and Frattaruolo on Financial Crisis are hanging on to Cessna Citation with grim determination, trailing the Kiwi-Australian duo by 89 miles at midday on Sunday as Colman and Cavanough close in on the bluQube Scoring Gate with just 180 miles reindexing to virtual line running through the North Atlantic.
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