The Game Closes Up

Saturday 18 October 2008 04:15 GMT

These are tense times for the race leading PUMA team who have seen their lead diminish to just 6 miles over Ericsson 3. In fact, skipper Kenny Read's team has slowed dramatically on the 0400 position report and has been bleeding miles to the entire fleet.

Sailing in just 5 knots of wind will do that. And with an average boat speed of just 5 knots over the previous hour - Ericsson 3 is roaring along, relatively speaking, at 12 knots - PUMA is unlikely to carry the lead into the next position report.

"We are very pleased with our position for the moment. We gybed south outside the Cape Verde islands seven hours ago and now we are concentrating on not being covered by the windshadow of Cap Verde," writes Gustav Morin from Ericsson 3.

"The latest report shows that we have made big gains on PUMA, who is now just 6 miles in front of us. The Doldrums are coming closer and it seems it's going to be a parking lot. Because of that this is still a very open race. The wind will shift a lot in the coming days. Some boats can come with wind from behind whilst another parks up."

PUMA remains the furthest east of the leading pack, and may be paying for this strategy now. In contrast, Green Dragon, positioned furthest to the west, has moved back into the top four, overtaking Delta Lloyd overnight, and is enjoying more wind than their rivals in the top half of the fleet.

"We have had to pay quite a high price to be the west most boat and I guess we will know in the next 24 hours if our strategy pays off," writes navigator Ian Moore. "If not the boys will be dark. We made them gybe 6 or 8 times today, sometimes in short succession and you forget how a simple tack or gybe is actually the most gruelling manoeuvre we have to do. It means that everybody has to be up, moving the stack of all the gear below and for the guys offwatch it means they miss sleep too...Well hopefully the gybe frenzy is over and we might be into some reaching over the next few days."

Ericsson 4 holds onto third place despite a short detour off their racing heading to drop off Tony Mutter at the Cape Verde Islands. The team was very efficient with the move and was back in racing trim in no time. But sailing the rest of the leg short handed will be difficult.

Finally, it is the boats at the back of the fleet who hold the best wind. Look for some fleet compression over the next position report or two. But even further north, the wind is beginning to ease, as Bouwe Bekking reports off Telefonica Blue.

"The breeze is still dropping , now down to 13 knots, we finally dared to change to our repaired spinnaker, which gives us an extra 200 square meters of sail area, and for the first time we are back up to our potential numbers, making us all smile. But in the meantime we are crossing our fingers that the repair will last. The next 24 hour will be crucial to how we are going to set ourselves up for crossing the doldrums, and we should take full advantage from being in the back of the fleet, as the boats ahead will give a good indication of how much breeze they are sailing in."

This could prove to be a pivotal day in Leg One...stay tuned