It’s been a long night for the teams in the Volvo Ocean Race with extremely variable breeze causing multiple a sail changes and little sleep for many. This has evolved into many miles lost across the board in the past 12 hours.

Bouwe Bekking on movistar has had the good fortune of keeping in touch with the leader, only losing eight miles in the last six hours but is still 49 nautical miles behind. Last night he reported in but will he be correct in his prediction that the yachts will gain again from behind?

“There was a bit of fortune on our side yesterday afternoon, will it finally be our turn? With good positioning movistar for the little low pressure system, which is building just northwest of and with a bit of luck, we made huge gains against the guys behind us. We stayed after two skeds the same with Black Betty, still in striking distance. But we expect that the boats behind us will gain back again a substantial amount.”

Bouwe’s boys have been working 16 hours straight to keep their speed up and the fatigue is showing as they try and move round movistar on the unfamiliar tack. “Now the conditions are light again. Back to a normal watch system and routine. One thing was strange that after sailing for nearly 12 days, with the wind coming in from starboard (the right) side, how you had to get used to moving downstairs again, when sailing on the other tack. I felt like a zombie, nearly crawling through the boat, but then I saw Stu (Bannatyne), struggling as bad as I did, a quick glance to each said enough and we both burst in laughter.”

Another yacht feeling the pressure is Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) in a bid to keep third they pushed hard but unfortunately for them it was too much for their large spinnaker which began splitting at the seams. Adding to this they started to have battery problems, which were finally found to be due to a loose wire. They have lost thirty nautical miles since the 0400 position report, the only consolation is the teams behind them have had similar losses.

The Brazilians on board Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) has lost the most with a massive 61 nautical miles, Ericsson Racing Team (John Kosteki) lost 57 and ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) lost 45 nautical miles in the past 12 hours.

As they all gybe erratically in the bid to get through these hard conditions, the teams all feared the worst and the nightmare has come true. Simon Fisher’s, (ABN AMRO TWO) sixth sense for the worst was right last night when he wrote, “It has been a long afternoon playing with the clouds on ABN AMRO TWO today, lots of gybes, trying to sniff out that little extra wind shift and a little more breeze. The sun has gone now only to be replaced with a thick layer of cloud covering the sky, the first signal of the tricky times to come.

“As the sky got cloudier over the course of the afternoon the winds slowly ebbed away leaving us in fear of parking up whilst the rest of the fleet carried on their merry way. After having been sat nervously in the nav station for the last ten minutes this fear has become a reality but fortunately not to the extent we initially expected. It would seem that light winds have engulfed the majority of the fleet.”

Despite being 206 nautical miles behind the leader the Ericsson Racing Team must be happy today, as they managed to sneak into fourth past Brasil 1 by 0400 GMT and are now seven nautical miles in front. Hopefully tonight will see less lost miles to help everyone’s sanity but as usual only time will tell.

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