Bowman/Pitman Jerry Kirby sets up for a reef en route to Rio De Janeiro on leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. Image copyright Rick Deppe/PUMA Ocean Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.
by Volvo Ocean Race media
The leaders smashed through the 10,000 barrier last night - as in less than 10,000 nautical miles on distance to finish. At 07:00 GMT this morning, both Ericsson 4 and PUMA have reached that milestone, although it's still a bit early to be counting miles to the finish!
True Wind speeds are down slightly as well, to near 15 knots. This probably isn't quite enough to provide relief from the relentless high speed reaching of the past several days, but any break in the power-shower will be welcomed by the crews.
The leaderboard remains the same and Ericsson 4 is still the class of the fleet over the past 24 hours. Their 385 mile day to 07:00 GMT this morning is 15 miles better than PUMA and nobody else comes close. Skipper Torben Grael and his men are adding to their lead and with them now at 7 degrees north latitude, they'll be thinking about the looming doldrums.
For PUMA, the focus is on the smells below and staying close to the leader. Skipper Ken Read won't be happy about dropping miles overnight. And in an email yesterday evening, he didn't sound to pleased about the smells on board. But it's all attributable to the power reaching conditions, and the lack of ability to dry out anything on board.
Third placed Ericsson 3 has just about held position with PUMA and added some margin to its advantage over Telefonica Blue and Green Dragon.
For the Dragon, after dropping to fifth place behind Bouwe Bekking's men yesterday morning, they've actually been able to claw back some miles overnight. Not bad, considering skipper Ian Walker and his crew had to battle with an unidentified object on their keel during the night. To add insult to injury, a problem with the mainsail meant more time at reduced speed. But their easterly routing seems to be coming good.
"In the middle of the night we quickly lost speed indicating we must have something caught on the keel. Because it was over 20 knots we had to bear off, lower the jib and go head to wind and back down. When all was said and done this would have cost us three or four miles," Walker wrote.
"Today we spent an hour sailing with no mainsail as we had to fix the inboard end of one of our batten sockets. It appears to have just come apart under the load of all this reaching. Fortunately we carry a spare, although as is so often the case the spare wasn't identical so it needed some fine tuning."
Walker goes on to write that he's happy with their easterly position. He reckons the fleet will have to come to them, and that should stop the bleeding off of miles to the leaders. On PUMA, Ken Read says that might just happen. He's worried about this split in the fleet.
"The fleet is splitting enough that people are going to start sailing in different weather patterns. What has already happened is that we are all starting to see different breeze variations from the same weather pattern. We have gotten pinned a bit to the southwest of the fleet by the breeze we have been in, while the troops behind have been able to sneak to the east of us. Even though the distance to the finish looks ominous for the boats behind right now, all this could change in an instant. It is a huge ocean out here, and the wind angles can make up some monster differences in a short period of time."
That's what the lads on Green Dragon are counting on. There are plenty of miles left in this leg yet.
Volvo Ocean Race
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