Global Ocean Race - Colman and Goodchild turn up the volume

On Saturday afternoon, the leading trio of Class40s in the double-handed, Global Ocean Race 2011-12 (GOR) poured across the Leg 2 Celox Sailing Scoring Gate at 69E, north of Kerguelen Island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Conrad Colman and Sam Goodchild crossed the virtual gate in first place taking the maximum six points with their Akilaria RC2, Cessna Citation. Within three hours of Colman and Goodchild crossing the gate, Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron on Campagne de France and Ross and Campbell Field with BSL tore through the gate averaging just under 14 knots and separated by two miles – an exceptionally compressed pack after 11 days and over 2,500 miles of racing from Cape Town.

While the front pack were collecting points 230 miles north of Kerguelen, Marco Nannini and Hugo Ramon in fourth with Financial Crisis and Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire on Phesheya-Racing in fifth were 390 miles north-west of the leaders, hammering through a cold front that has been relentlessly stalking the fleet. From the South African Class40, Nick Leggatt described conditions at 42S: “We’ve really been battling the elements,” he reported early on Sunday morning. “The long-awaited cold front finally arrived during the mid-afternoon yesterday with rain; a wind shift of 125 degrees; a sudden drop in temperature from 18 degrees to 9 degrees and squally winds to over 30 knots.”

Having spent the previous five days reaching on port tack above the GOR’s Leg 2 Western Indian Ocean Ice Limit at 42S, Phesheya-Racing and Financial Crisis are now on a starboard fetch in a frigid southern wind of around 20 knots. “In retrospect, we’ve been lucky as it never reached a full gale, but with very rough seas all night, tons of cold spray and rain, and a chill to the wind, it has made life quite tough on board,” says Leggatt with typical understatement. “I am sure our competitors are using a similar tactic to take on the elements,” he believes. “Relying heavily on the autopilot to do the steering while we fight from the trenches, going over the top occasionally to check on conditions and tweak the sail trim, before hunkering down again with a warming cup of tea in our bunker.”

Leading Phesheya-Racing by 33 miles at 15:00 GMT on Sunday, Marco Nannini and Hugo Ramon have also taken a pasting: “The front came through, the wind went around from northerly to southerly in a very short space,” confirmed Marco Nannini at noon GMT on Sunday. “Within an hour we were reaching in 30-35 knots of wind in a very, very confused sea state, absolutely horrible, boat thrown left to right, surfing, then bashing into a wave, then knocked sideways, waves of frozen water crashing over the cockpit making even the shortest trip to trim a sail extremely uncomfortable.”

Seeking sanctuary down below from the maelstrom on deck wasn’t always easy: “I ran the heater for the first time,” Nannini reports. “The exhaust pipe had come undone from the unit resulting in all the smoke invading the cabin. Very unpleasant and I couldn’t open any of the hatches due to the waves and just waited a long while for the air to clear.”