As the Volvo Ocean Race fleet reaches the half way mark of leg seven from New York to Portsmouth, the ocean chess match continues. ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) is still the clear leader, with 1370 nautical miles to sail before reaching the scoring gate at The Lizard, off the south west tip of England, but it is game on for the remaining podium places.

Ericsson (Neal McDonald), in second place, is watching Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) carefully, trying to guess what the Brazilians are planning. McDonald and his team are trying to take the left hand side of the course away from the Brazilians forcing them sail into the lighter breeze. Ericsson’s investment in the south 18 hours ago looks to be paying off as they lead Brasil 1 by 62 miles, but are now 74 miles behind the Dutch boat.

In the last six hours, Brasil 1 and Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) have both lost 27 miles to the leader, the biggest losses in the fleet in this period. Brunel (Matt Humphries) and ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) are steering a more northerly course, while movistar (Bouwe Bekking) has found some breeze and is averaging 15.5 knots.

“The forecast is for a strong breeze from the westerly quadrants all the way up to England – up to 40 knots plus,” explained Bouwe Bekking this morning. “Not really ideal for 24-hour record breaking as the wind direction looks set to change a lot, so that straight line sailing won’t be possible. But then, we have seen enough unexpected change in the wind on this leg that the unthinkable might be possible. At least we have the longest runway of all to give it a crack,” he added.

Share or bookmark this story: