Staying with the pack is the strategy that ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) has elected to follow after their expensive gybe earlier today to position themselves to the south of the fleet. At first this move appeared terrible, but now it is pay back time as the team climbs up to fourth place. Down in the south, Sanderson reports beautiful, fast sailing in clear blue skies with flat water.

But for their Dutch team mates on ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse), south is now not an option. They are committed to the north and if they were to cut their losses now and gybe south, they would cross behind the rest of the fleet. They have watched their lead dwindle to almost nothing and, having realised they were too far north, had no choice but to accept that the rest of the fleet was going to come rumbling up from behind. Over the last six hours they have lost another 11 miles.

“This brings on a range of emotions from panic to anger as you wish you could turn back the clock and make that sail change a little bit earlier and go with the fleet. It is easy to start making irrational decisions and start gybing and chasing south to get to the fleet, but in the nav station, we made an agreement to stick by our guns and not go roaring around the ocean in a blind panic,” explains Simon Fisher, navigator of ABN AMRO TWO. Fisher added, “luckily, with every sched (position report) that has come in, we have been pleasantly surprised how little we have in fact lost. With any luck the bleeding will soon stop and we can go back on the offensive again.”

Surprising, Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) made the same choice but now have their moment in the sun as they take over the lead.

At daybreak this morning, Brasil 1 was just behind ABN AMRO TWO and a close race is developing between the two boats in the north. “It is very exciting as we are all having a pretty extreme approach to the ice gate. We have chosen to stay north of the fleet to give us more options and some other boats have chosen a more southerly route. The wind will drop close to the ice gate so I think things will be shaken around in the fleet quite a lot. ABN AMRO TWO is on our bow, 1.5 miles and we can see her and they have a spinnaker up. At the moment we are two boats quite alone up here, to the north of the fleet,” Knut Frostad from Brasil 1 reported to race HQ this afternoon.

In the south, the battle still rages in the rest of fleet. Ericsson Racing Team (Neal McDonald) moves up to second place, a position which will please this team who are badly in need of some good luck. Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) is in third place, but only two miles behind Ericsson and level pegging with ABN AMRO ONE. Movistar brings up the rear in sixth place, but still well in touch with the rest of the fleet, just 22 miles behind the leader, pinned between Ericsson to the north and Pirates of the Caribbean to the south.

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