| At sea. Volvo Ocean Race: Ericsson 96 miles from Barra Head south tip of the Outer Hebrides |
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| Tuesday, 06 June 2006 | |
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Event media: Ericsson (Neal McDonald) leads the fleet steadily north on leg eight of the Volvo Ocean Race and is now 10 miles north of the northern tip of Ireland, while Brunel (Matt Humphries) has taken a flyer 23 miles to the west in search of wind. The rest of the fleet is tightly bunched, just two miles separating them west to east, and the leader, Ericsson, has 96 miles to go to Barra Head, the southernmost tip of the Outer Hebrides. Matt Humphries’ decision to take Brunel out to the west is one that can’t be made by the by Paul Cayard. From a points perspective, Cayard has to keep The Black Pearl in touch with Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) to protect his position of second place overall. If Pirates of the Caribbean and Brasil 1 were to finish this leg in their current positions, Cayard would lead Grael by just 5.5 points leaving the fight for overall second place very much open with an in-port race and another leg to go before the finish of the event in Gothenburg, Sweden later this month. At the head of the fleet, Ericsson is enjoying 17 knots of breeze, with the rest of the fleet in slightly lighter conditions, but the short term forecast is for the wind to start dropping this afternoon and the fleet will head into another area of no wind again tonight and tomorrow. As the fleet approaches Fair Isle, the rounding mark at the top of Scotland, a broken down cold front will likely give them approximately 15 knots of breeze. With the fresher conditions, ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) has come steaming up through the fleet, achieving the highest 24-hour run – a miserly 239 nautical miles. “The breeze filled in and ABN AMRO ONE was just plain faster than us,” wrote Paul Cayard this morning. “This again raised the anxiety level in me as we were finally on a point of sail that we should make some gains and were not. This morning, ABN AMRO ONE has continued to sail away from us in 15 knots of wind, flat running, and now has sailed right up along side Brasil 1. This eases my anxiety as it is just that ABN AMRO ONE is a rocket, not that we are going that badly,” he added. With 857 miles to go to the finish, only eight miles separate the fleet from first to fifth place, with Brunel 18 miles from the leader, in sixth place. Leg 8 day 5 1000 GMT positions: 1 ERIC Ericsson Racing Team 2 BRA1 Brasil 1 DTL: 02 3 ABN1 ABN AMRO ONE DTL: 02 4 POTC Pirates of the Caribbean DTL: 08 5 ABN2 ABN AMRO TWO DTL: 08 6 AUS1 Brunel DTL: 18 DTL: Distance to leader |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 June 2006 ) |
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