Ecover 110 miles from Boston and Transatlantic record

by Offshore Challenges on 13 Jun 2004 At 1500 GMT this afternoon, leading IMOCA Ecover skippered by Mike Golding had 110 miles to go to the finish in Boston. Golding was averaging 13 knots in a brisk north-east breeze and his ETA was for 23:24:00 GMT tonight (12.6.04).

However, this interpolation does not take into account the weather down the track where there is a barrier of light airs right across the race course that will effectively slow down the front runners - his team predict a more realistic ETA for Ecover as 0800 GMT.

If Mike Golding takes victory in the Open 60 monohull class, it will be his first major solo race win of his career and at the moment, Ecover's ETA would take a considerable amount off the existing 60ft monohull record of 14 days, 16 hours and 1 minute set in 1992 by Yves Parlier.

Thirty-one miles behind Golding is Swiss skipper, Dominique Wavre (Temenos), who also looks set to achieve one of personal bests in solo sailing.

Wavre has reported that one of his mainsail track batten cars broke during the night but this does not seem to have affected his on-water performance as he holds his position against third-placed Mike Sanderson.

Kiwi skipper, Sanderson (Pindar AlphaGraphics), got within 4 miles of Wavre this morning but since then Wavre has managed to widen the gap to 10 miles.

Yet there are many obstacles that still face the front runners in this fleet as they close on Boston - fishing boats, pleasure craft, shallow waters and fickle winds - the race is not over yet...

Steve Ravussin on ORMA 60 Banque Covefi is expected imminently and will be the last but one of the ORMA fleet to arrive in Boston.

Yves Parlier on his new catamaran still has 243 miles to go.

In the 50-footer class, Eric Bruneel on 50ft multi Trilogic is the furthest boat south at 40 degrees north and maintains his 200+ mile lead over this class.

The battle for second is still an open contest, although Rich Wilson on Great American II holds the advantage by 38 miles of Dominique Demachy on GiFi.

Demachy, however, can stop looking over his shoulder for Canadian Mike Birch on Nootka, who this morning informed the Race Organisation of his retirement due to autopilot failure.

Birch is now heading for Nova Scotia.

Fifty-foot monohull skipper, American Joe Harris, has suffered in his southerly position allow Jacques Bouchacourt on Okami to take second place by 24 miles.

It would seem there is little to stop Kip Stone on Artforms reaching Boston first, as he has built up a lead of 168 miles.

Rescue operations for the disabled Open 60s still on the North Atlantic are well underway.

The Hatherleigh is currently steaming NW into the Atlantic and will rendezvous with Virbac (Jean-Pierre Dick) tomorrow (Sunday) morning to take the boat in tow and the high-speed, motorised trimaran, Ocean Alchimiste, is making 17 knots towards PRB (Vincent Riou).

Swiss skipper, Bernard Stamm, is now onboard the 62 metre long, 1190 tonne ice breaking tug, Alex Gordon, and the salvage team are currently conducting a grid-pattern search in the area of Cheminee Poujoulat-Armor Lux's last recorded position with calculations for a 0.5 knot current taken into account.

Stamm has already said that he should be the man to dive under the yacht to cut away the mast, rigging and sails.

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