TWO's navigator SiFi seems pleased, “Just wanted to say that the boys are absolutely stoked with cracking the 550 mark although we don't want to celebrate too soon as the guys around us are going pretty damn fast as well. It has been an awesome 24 hours though, phenomenal speeds, but safe and under control - a testament to how incredible this new class is! What an awesome race.”

Their fellow team members aboard ABN AMRO ONE are just as pleased as the boys on TWO, “What a fantastic effort guys. You deserve this, we have got your new record at 558 already, and I am sure it will go up.

“From all of us here on ABN AMRO ONE, we are so excited for you guys and another massive day for the Team, I hope all the shore team take a lot of enjoyment out of this as well, as I know the whole team have worked their hearts out for days like this.

“Normally it would be a sad day to have to hand something like this over, but we are genuinely very excited for you guys.

“Massive effort, our greatest congratulations to everyone.

“Cheers, Mike, Stan, Betty and the Guys

“P.S.. haven't we taught you to respect your elders better then that...!”

After their deviation from the straight and narrow yesterday ABN AMRO ONE are back on the easterly track and still leading by 233 miles, though TWO have eroded that lead by 16 miles overnight. Pirates soldier along in third though the latest numbers recorded just before the 1000GMT poll show that they have started to post similar speeds to those of ABN AMRO TWO and might be setting a new record themselves.

In fact, the three middle runners of the fleet, ABN AMRO TWO, Pirates and movistar have all set 24 hour runs well over 500 miles at the last schedule.

Bouwe Bekking reports on life aboard movistar and some sail problems, “Finally real good breeze for movistar, made some gains yesterday , but then lost again, because of being more north and having a tad less breeze.

“Amazing how that works, nearly impossible to dive south again. As well a small tear in a spinnaker didn't help. We had to take the sail down, normally we can furl this sail tight up, so that it looks like a long snake, this way the wind has not much effect on it when hoisting or dropping, but now it was all hands on deck for what we call a mongrel drop. A tight rolled sail is impossible to repair.

“Probably everybody has tried once as a kid to hold his/her jacket open in a gale when standing on the beach. Now try to do the same with 300 square metres trying to fly away from the boat, big waves washing over the bow of movistar, and the guys hanging on for their dear lives. But some way somehow we managed it, and now 300 square metres fills up our living space inside of the boat. Don't ask me how they do, but they got it fixed in no time. Glued and stitched and the sail like new, the sailmakers were in their element. Thanks Spike (Peter Dorien) and Nitro (Noel Drennan).”

Spare a thought for ING Real Estate Brunel. Not only have they been suffering in a different wind system to the rest of the fleet for a while, though now they are in the same strong breeze, they have had mainsail track problems with their mast which has meant that they have been sailing with a far smaller mainsail than would be ideal for the weather. Grant Wharington explains, “It is enormously frustrating to drive a V8 motor car running on only four cylinders, that’s how it feels out here!

“On day two in this leg from Cape Town whilst sailing under first reef we pulled the mainsail luff track off the back of the mast at the reef point. After Woos (Gareth Cooke) spent two hours up the rig repairing it, we decided we could continue without using this reef point, so for the next week we had to go between full mainsail and reef two. But 36 hours ago, whilst pushing hard to get across the bottom of the low which had formed across our path and into the fast north westerlies, we ripped the track off the mast again, this time at the second reef halyard lock and far worse!

“Now we are down to third reef only as we cannot pull the mainsail up past the broken track at reef two. The third reef on a Volvo 70 is about the size of an Optimist mainsail, which is fine if you have 50+ knots of wind which we did get when we did not make it across the low! However in any less wind speed we are dreadfully slow and stuck watching or opposition put big miles into us on every sked.

“What can we do out here? Nothing, as this is the kind of repair which gets done on the ground with the rig out. We will have to just battle on with what we have. This is now a flash back to leg one where the rich get richer every day!”

Source: Event Media