There is no let up for the tiring crews racing in leg five of the Volvo Ocean Race. After an exciting 24 hours, where the fleet has had anything from a 14 knot run to a 25 knots tight reach in a matter of five minutes, the leaders have now broken free of the stationary front, the volatile weather lying beyond it, and have reached a ridge of high pressure, which has slowed them considerably. The wind speed began to drop around 0400 GMT this morning and now the leaders have a miserly three knots. The next question they face is how to find the narrowest point to cross the slowly expanding ridge and reach the building westerly winds beyond it.

At present, the chasing pack is still enjoying reasonable wind speeds and some impressive gains have been made, but these will be short lived and, as they reach the high pressure as the ridge will have expanded by the time they get there and consequently their progress will be slower.

Movistar (Bouwe Bekking) has now closed the gap to 27 miles from leaders ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson), while Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard), Ericsson (John Kostecki) and Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) have all gained just short of 50 miles in the last six hour period. The biggest gain in the fleet is backmarker, ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) who has gained a massive 62 nautical miles and are still averaging 15.5 knots. The distances lost and gained over the past 24 hours are a good indication that the weather Gods are testing the boats and the crews in every way possible as they battle their way towards the finish in Baltimore which should be in the early part of next week.

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