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After
a day of reasonably high speeds and easy sailing, at 1600 UTC today the
Leg 6 lead changed again when CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand
(Chris Nicholson/AUS) regained pole position followed by sparring
partner Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (Ian Walker/GBR).
After separating
earlier in the leg, with CAMPER and Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing taking a
route close to the shore, PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG (Ken
Read/USA) choosing the middle road, and Telefónica and Groupama, who are
struggling to keep pace with the Spanish boat, taking the offshore
option, the courses of the five boats are beginning to fuse once more.
Tonight
they are picking their way across a permanent and stationary cold
front, a 50-mile wide area of storms that has produced a 180-degree wind
shift and is now throwing out a much lighter north westerly breeze. As
the fleet tacks back and forth around the thunderclouds, separation has
started to reduce and at 1900, 30.4 nautical miles (nm) covered the
fleet from CAMPER in first place to Groupama in fifth.
Telefónica
(Iker Martínez/ESP) and Groupama (Franck Cammas/FRA) are still
offshore, intent on covering each other and guarding their positions of
first and second in the overall rankings. PUMA who took the lead briefly
earlier today, in fourth place on the overall scoreboard, are free to
sail their own race, while CAMPER and Abu Dhabi, just 0.4 nm apart, have
steered away from the coast and are racing towards the outriders and
take on the challenge of the storm area.
The frontal line is
light and fluky and just one cloud can rain on the parade of any of the
teams and shake up the leg leaderboard up dramatically. The next 12 – 24
hours will be something of a lottery until the first boat reaches the
northern edge, however all are confident in the positions they have
chosen as they work their way towards Cabo Branco, the easternmost tip
of Brazil, 650 nm or so ahead.
“We’re fairly happy with our
position. At this stage we wouldn’t swap positions with the guys inshore
and we are fairly comfortable with where we are,” said PUMA navigator,
Tom Addis.
“Traditionally, from here on up, once you pop on out
into the trade winds on the northern side, being east is the thing that
is worthwhile, and we are west of our opposition. We are going to try to
keep working east and hopefully, when the music starts again on the
other side, we will be far enough east to lay Recife in the north of
Brazil,” explained Will Oxley, navigator of CAMPER.
“I’m happy
with our eastern position,” said Groupama navigator Jean-Luc Nélias.
“It’s a bit more logical and I feel it’s less hazardous than the course
taken by Abu Dhabi and CAMPER,” he added.
There is at least 100
nm of tricky sailing to complete before the fleet punches through the
front and reaches the reasonable breeze on the other side, when the
winners will be easy to see and the not so lucky will be searching hard
to find a passing lane.
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