Staying Focussed

The tactic being taken by all the Volvo Ocean Race teams today, is to dive south to dodge the worst of the massive high, which is positioned between the fleet and the first ice gate of leg four. ABN AMRO ONE has added another four miles to her lead although the yachts are still in close proximity, with only a 78 nautical mile divide between the most southerly yacht Brasil 1 and most northerly ABN AMRO TWO.

Paul CAYARD (USA) on his good ship the Black Pearl, explained the tactic earlier today, ‘The forecast for the next three days is that we are working the south side of a high pressure cell turning into a ridge. This ridge will block our path to the first ice waypoint which is actually a gate. This ‘block’ will probably compress the fleet as the first boats hit the wall first and the other come piling in from behind.

Today we were in a ‘see-saw’ battle with Ericsson, within sight of each other all day. That was fun and we each learned a bit I am sure.’

The Pirates have been battling it out with the Neal MCDONALD’s (GBR) Ericsson Racing Team and the Brazilians for the past day. Unfortunately in the past twelve hours Torben GRAEL‘s (BRA) Brasil 1 has fallen back slightly by diving further south than the others. Ericsson though, managed to stay with the black and red boat and passed them yesterday to take third place. They have increased the lead this afternoon to six nautical miles, whilst being eight miles to the south.

Tough Start For Brazilians

Brasil 1 has had a hard start to the race, they revealed today that they ripped their genoa at the start and have spent all the hours since piecing it back together. Luckily the sail has not been needed since but they know it’s only a matter of time before the call for it will go up.

Knut FROSTAD (NOR), watch leader onboard the Brazilian yacht, humorously explained this morning, the great questions different sail combinations pose in yacht racing. This is especially apt, after the last leg, where many teams were losing precious miles to bad sail choices. ‘It’s amazing how precious these pieces of cloth are to us. As girls can spend hours watching, commenting, discussing and shopping for cloth to wear, here we are discussing, commenting, watching (we have been shopping as well) all this cloth, just to hang it up in the rig.

ABN AMRO ONE Out Front

The race leader again for the moment is Mike SANDERSON’s (NZL) team on ABN AMRO ONE with a 19 nautical mile lead on the pack. He focussed today on how hard it was for him to leave Wellington, New Zealand, his fiancée, family, friends and home country for the Southern Ocean. But instead of being worried about the high pressure ahead, he has been firmly focussing on what is happening above that, a dying tropical storm to the north in the South Pacific. ‘For now the big decision on this leg is how to deal with a big low that used to be a tropical storm, there are going to be some interesting tactical decisions needed to be made by the fleet in the next 48 hours. Will make for some fun watching.’

Position Report At 1600 Hours UTC, 20 February 2006

DTF: Distance To Finish
DTL: Distance To Leader
DTLC: Distance To Leader Change; the difference between the distance from the boat to the leader taken at the time of the last six hour poll, and the distance from the boat to the leader at the previous poll
CMG: Course Made Good; the average course steered over the period of the past six hours up to the time of the last poll
SMG: Speed Made Good
VMG: Velocity Made Good; the average velocity of the boat towards the finish over the entire leg
ETA: Estimated Time of Arrival

Overall Leaderboard
(Up to and including Leg Three)

For a complete list of all the news about the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-2006 CLICK HERE.