At 2040 GMT ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) was at 40 45 51 S: 70 05 78 E and had passed the scoring gate, collecting three points, putting her into second place overall. Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) although being threatened by movistar (Bouwe Bekking), looks set to round the gate, just 55 nm away, in third place. Both ABN AMRO TWO and the pirates have had a thrilling ride over the last six hours, achieving top speeds of 29 knots or more, giving them a taste of real Southern Ocean weather at last.

Leaders, ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) is now on the opposite gybe, heading south, and the position report is showing the predicted losses as she heads south away from the next scoring gate at Eclipse Island and the finish in Melbourne in search of strong breeze.

ING Real Estate Brunel (Grant Wharington) is still stuck in low pressure, while Torben Grael and his team are enjoying their return to the race track, clocking up some nice speeds on the newly repaired Brasil 1.

With several boats suffering damage, concern has been expressed recently about the safety of the new Volvo Open 70 design and in particular its keel system. Mike Sanderson skipper of leading boat ABN AMRO ONE took up the baton on behalf of the sailors today in his daily report to race headquarters.

“I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that I will happily sit down with anyone and explain the thousands of hours that have gone in to making of Team ABN AMRO’s keel systems as safe as possible.

“We need the keels to stay where we want them to during the race for two reasons, and the good news is that they both go hand in hand.

“Firstly we need them to stay there for the safety of the guys. But we also need them to stay there so that we can keep racing and the team that can finish all the legs without a break down, picking up the points bonus, as all legs count.

“So the safety of everyone is at the top of the list no matter how you look at it. Every Volvo 70 that has had a problem so far, since the first boat was launched in January last year, has got back in to port without assistance.

“Everyone called for a more exciting boat, both the public and the sailors. And guess what? We got it..

“Volvo has supplied us with a rule that makes just fantastic boats. The breakage’s are all from weight reduction decisions that have been made by either the design team or the racing team…

“We all knew the whole time that we needed a big bulb on the keel to win the race, and we also knew that we needed to finish the legs to win the race.

“It will be he who has walked that fine line correctly at the end of the day that will come out on top and we’re not going to know who that is for another seven months yet.”

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