Massive seas and patches of no wind, a deadly combination, were lurking in wait for the Volvo Ocean fleet as they rounded the mysterious land mark, Cape Horn.

Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) passed Cape Horn in 33 knots of wind and now, just 47 miles east, they have just five knots of wind, but a huge seaway. “At least we are headed directly where we want to go: La Maire Strait, which is the water between the very bottom of Argentina and Staten Island,” wrote Cayard tonight. Leading yacht, ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson), is in the same situation, but worse, only managing two knots in 4 knots of wind. The best wind is offshore and Cayard and his band of Pirates may well change their game plan once they become aware of this.

The luck is staying with the back markers as they scream up behind the leaders, in a pattern that is now becoming a familiar threat to Mike Sanderson at the head of the fleet. ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse), the furthest south, is giving the becalmed boats a wide berth, keeping well to the south to avoid the wind hole. She is still sailing in 26 knots of wind, while Ericsson Racing Team is making 22 knots. Even the stricken movistar, who almost sank earlier today, is managing 13 knots at times, but she still has 78 miles to run to reach the scoring gate before diving into Ushuaia to effect repairs to her leaking keel box.

ABN AMRO TWO reports massive seas, 45 knots of wind and, at times, upwards of 35 knots of boat speed. They totally destroyed their code 6 spinnaker when the boat nose accelerated down an impressively large wave and the bow dug in, stopping the boat dead in her tracks.

“Despite Hans Horrevoets’ valiant effort to save the spinnaker by easing about five metres of sheet, it was a futile situation and, as the bow went down, the tack of the spinnaker was ripped clean off.

“Even at this stage it wasn’t quite over as the wave that had caused the tip up now started breaking over the transom and was attempting to flip Sebastien Josse over the handle bars. Luckily Seb, in the midst of all this, managed to execute a swift left hand down and steered the boat away from the point of Chinese gybing. What ensued was a tidy up and the realisation that this was it for the code 6 for this leg as the tack patch conveniently tripped itself off the tack line and floated away,” explained navigator Simon Fisher.

Shortly after this, when ‘Sod’s law of the sea’ was in full force, they hoisted their code 0 sail which only lasted half an hour before the tack line snapped sending it and the metal furling unit flogging behind the boat. “The furler did a spectacular job of beating the s…t out of the sail and the sail repair list got even longer,” Fisher said.

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