News & Features | ISAF | World Sailing | Official Site : Day Of Calm

News

7 June 2005, 04:36 pm

Day Of Calm

Faraday Mill OSTAR 2005

For a day, at least, things clamed down as the leading boats headed for the halfway mark yesterday. Since the spate of retirements over the weekend only one skipper has reported turning round overnight, Patrice CARPENTIER (FRA) on the last but one of the Open 40s VM Materiaux is heading back to France.

CARPENTIER has given no reason for his retirement at present, and it would appear that he in fact made the decision on Saturday.

Roger LANGEVIN (FRA) on Branec IV continues to lead the fleet, still closely followed by the underwear boat Cotonella but, the other member of the trio, Pierre ANTOINE (FRA) on Spirit has, overnight taken a course almost due south and has fallen back from the other two on distance to finish.

The leading British skipper at the moment is Steve WHITE on the well used but trusty, Olympian Challenger. At nearly 50 feet she is the longest of all the monohulls and is putting this advantage to good effect, WHITE is only 180 miles behind the fastest multihulls and 213 miles ahead of Echo Zulu, who is heading the main bulk of the fleet where, ten boats have a mere 162 miles between all of them.

Another British skipper, Stephen GRATTEN on his 32 foot Contessa, has steadily headed north and is now completely on his own nearly 250 miles above the main fleet. Not surprisingly, during his daily report he was asking if anyone else had spotted any whales yet, also, he said he was aiming to be the first skipper to spot an iceberg. He should not worry, there is not a lot of competition up there at present.

Three boats have not made contact for a couple of days, but presuming they are heading on what has been their average course, Paul HEINEY (GBR) on Ayesha of St. Mawes is still bringing up the rear.