New York to Barcelona Race - Hugo Boss battle to cover final miles

by Leslie Greenhalgh on 16 Jun 2014 IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race leader Hugo Boss looks set to arrive at the finish line off Barcelona’s W-Hotel at 1900-2100 local time followed by Team Neutrogena at 2300-0200.

GAES is expected into Barcelona tomorrow late morning-early afternoon.

At 11:00 UTC Hugo Boss was holding a comfortable 25 mile lead over Neutrogena with just 65 miles left to sail. At the time the lead duo were mid-way between the northwest coast of Majorca and mainland Spain. GAES remained 160 miles behind and was 27 miles southeast of Alicante.

The Mediterranean continues to throw curved balls at the competitors. After days of flat calms, this morning the lead duo has found themselves back to tackling gale force headwinds as they battled to cover the final miles to Barcelona.

Mid-morning Pepe Ribes, skipper of Hugo Boss reported that earlier they were sailing upwind in 20 knots when they were struck by a 45 knot gust ahead of a front that tossed their yacht on its side.

'It was a typical, unexpected Mediterranean gust - it was very hard and caused us to broach. We are recovering right now. The inside of the boat is a mess, so we’ve had to spend quite a bit of time getting everything back in order.'

Earlier this morning Gerard Marin on GAES reported they had 25 knots of wind and recounted how they had been through their sail inventory as the wind had increased and were about to put in the second reef in their mainsail. 'We are waiting for the wind must drop this afternoon,' he said.

Marc Guillemot, the injured skipper of Safran is back in France. Having been to hospital in Nantes he has been found to have four broken ribs.