Global Ocean Race - South Atlantic highway opens for the GOR leaders

At the head of the Global Ocean Race (GOR) fleet, the gap between the double-handed Class40 leaders, Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron with Campagne de France and Ross and Campbell Field in second with BSL has closed further as the Fields connected with a front they have been targeting for a week and celebrated the rendezvous with a fierce knockdown. In third place, Conrad Colman and Hugo Ramon ended their rapid descent through the South Atlantic on Cessna Citation and hardened up, keeping in the north-easterly breeze and avoiding the headwinds lurking to the south spinning from the top of the rapidly expanding high-pressure system currently engulfing the western half of the South Atlantic.

Marco Nannini and Paul Peggs in fourth on Financial Crisis continue their port fetch south-east and should remain out of the approaching headwinds until Friday and, 180 miles further north in fifth and sixth place, Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire with Phesheya-Racing and the Dutch duo of Nico Budel and Ruud van Rijsewijk on Sec. Hayai remain attached by elastic with the difference deficit between the two first generation Akilarias compressing by 11 miles in the past 24 hours.

However, throughout Tuesday, the South Africans on Phesheya-Racing were struggling to get their 2006 Akilaria up to speed with Budel and Van Rijsewijk taking 28 miles from their lead between dawn on Monday and Tuesday afternoon. Leggatt and Hutton-Squire exhausted all the trimming alternatives on Monday night, but this failed to improve progress. “We topped up the ballast tanks and checked the keel to see if anything was caught that might slow us down,” explains Hutton-Squire. “We eased the sails and then trimmed them back on to make sure we were not over powered and that did not help at all.”