Rhythm of the Race Fast for many, faster for Kingfisher.

Standings table 

Top 3

1.  PRB 52 South 132 West
2.  Kingfisher 56 South 139 West + 139  miles 
3.  Sill 56 South 140 West +150 miles

Fleet round up section

Kingfisher has moved past Sill and taken 2nd place.  Ellen Macarthur's lead is now 11 miles.  Her speed of 15.8 knots is the fastest of the top 3.

Michel Desjoyeaux and PRB are still in the lead despite not having an engine to generate electricity.  He will have to modify his routing to get by without many of the electronics Josh Hall mentions below.

Yves Parlier continues to sail his mobile boat shop, Aquitaine Innovations.  Yves is building his jury rig as he sails to Steward Island off New Zealand.  He expects to be there this weekend.

Skipper Communications

Mike Golding Group 4 "I’m trying to improve the situation with the generator. It is definitely a problem with the battery and not the generator. The battery was low on water so I replaced it, I added 2 and a half litres of water, quite a lot, and it definitely had an immediate effect. I ran the charger, it was difficult for the charger to charge the last 100 Amps. I turned off the generator and turned on the engine, and something had changed. I stopped charging the batteries 4 hours ago now and I’ve got 12 volts, these early signs are good. It’s a small step, and I’ll have to string out the fuel. The water in the fuel certainly put a spanner in the works."


Marc Thiercelin Active Wear "For me dismasting would be the worst damage. But it doesn’t stop me from having all the sails up!"

Yves Parlier Aquitaine Innovations ""The mast will pass through a plastic casing. In this plastic casing under the mast, there will be a reheater. The casing will be sealed, with a bit of carbon and aluminium to help dissipate that heat around the mast section. I’ll use at first my Christmas candles to bring the temperature up slowly. I have to be careful not to use too much gas. With this oven I won’t have enough gas to get me back to Les Sables. I already had that happen to me in the first race. In any case I could live without it!"

Josh Hall EBP-Gartmore "The electronics aboard are really amazing now - I can be sitting at the chart table looking at my CD chart on a screen, the boats position highlighted via GPS, simultaneously a message I have just written is e-mailing out through the standard C; a live infra red photo of the worlds surface is being trapped from an orbitting satellite; and through the sat phone I am downloading weather charts from the internet. We have come a long way from the early solo sailors who just had their eyes, experience and a barometer."

Roland Jourdain Sill "I’ll have to shake out one of those reefs as I know I’m under canvassed in the more moderate winds. But I must stay ready to change direction if any more of those white monsters appear on my route."

Ellen Macarthur Kingfisher "Never in my life before have I experienced such beauty, and fear at the same time. 10 icebergs so far today...

They have ranged from 200 foot in length, to a bout half a mile. The first was not a surprise, the second neither really - but when the third, fourth, fifth and 6th all appeared in a line with just a mile between them I begun to be surprised, in fact
bewildered at their frequency. I wanted to gybe North, but ended up hand steering to pass 3 of the bergs to windward. I gybed between the 5th and 6th only to see the 7th and 8th - the 7th being the most enormous of all... "


Current weather conditions NW winds 30 knots and up for the top 3

Weather Forecast Continued fast sailing from an accompanying low pressure.

What does it all mean

Ellen Macarthur has sailed through icebergs to take 2nd.  Leader Desjoyeaux now has a permanent handicap of little electricity, which neither Kingfisher nor Sill have.