Lead changes in Cook Strait

by Lizzie Green, Volvo OR Media on 16 Feb 2006 As leg three of the Volvo Ocean Race comes to a nail biting end, Bouwe Bekking and his crew on movistar has stolen ABN AMRO ONE’s (Mike Sanderson) top spot as the wind drops in Cook Strait. But will they be able to keep it up until the finish in Wellington, or will Kiwi Mike Sanderson celebrate a third offshore win in his home country? The answer is predicted to come by 2100 GMT tonight.

Massive gains were made in the past 12 hours by all the fleet except ABN AMRO ONE as they had reached Cape Farewell on the north western tip of New Zealand’s South Island and the fickle breeze. At 0400 GMT movistar was 32 miles behind the Dutch yacht, by 1000 GMT they were neck and neck and at 1300 they had a slim lead of one nautical mile. They are now level pegging with just 49 miles to go to the finish line.

Bouwe spoke earlier about finally managing to get into his sleeping bag, but was of course still fully dressed in his wet weather gear, ready for any eventuality like all the crew. He described the conditions that brought him up and past ABN AMRO ONE today. ‘We had some fantastic sailing last night, not so much breeze, but big swells, which are coming from a perfect direction, so we are surfing them down all the time. Everybody is working hard, to get the maximum out of movistar.’

The yachts have all been gybing downwind trying different tactics to make gains on their rivals. It is currently early morning in Cook Strait and as dawn approaches, the tide will change and the fleet will slow, causing more bunching.

Paul Cayard currently in third place on Pirates of the Caribbean explained the situation that occurred in the last few dark hours and how the future looks:

‘Things have tightened up as we rounded Cape Farewell and all slowed down considerably due to light winds on the north side of the south island with the prevailing southerly gradient. We never came to a complete stop but had to make one drastic gybe out away from land to escape a hole right along the coast. Sailing along coast lines at night is always tricky.

'Hard to know if there will be ‘night breeze’ which is a wind that blows out offshore at night or whether it will be flat calm along a shore. We have stayed offshore a bit, 10 miles plus, just to try to insure that we don't get becalmed. So far, so good. We have been moving the whole time.

‘Movistar caught ABN AMRO ONE shortly after rounding Cape Farewell. Maybe ABN AMRO ONE got too close to the land at Cape Farewell and fell into a real light spot. We definitely noticed more pressure offshore there. Always tricky to know how tight to cut the corner.

‘The forecast for the next 12 hours is for light winds slowly shifting from the southeast to the north and dropping from nine knots which we currently have and then to four knots by 0000 UTC. If that is correct, it will be a slow last 60 miles.
But that is just a forecast.’

Ericsson (Neal McDonald) who has been unlucky in this leg has finally been blessed with more wind than the rest of the fleet cutting down their deficit to the leaders by 33 nautical miles in the past 12 hours. This was not enough to cheer them up, as Steve Hayles shows in his daily log. ‘When you look up the definition of painful in the dictionary I don't know what it says but I am very clear what it should say; ‘painful means being behind in a small fleet of Volvo 70's with the wind dying from behind’!’

LEG THREE DAY 4, 15.2.06, 1600 GMT POSITION REPORT
YACHT Latitude Longitude DTF SMG 24 Hour Run 24 Hour Speed DTL DTLC PLPTS POP ETA OVERALL

1 MOVI 40 45.88S 174 35.11E 00049 10.3 340 14.2 00000 +00000 7.0 7.0 15/02/06 21:03:41 3

2 ABN1 40 45.78S 174 33.50E 00049 10.3 316 13.2 00000 +00001 6.0 6.0 15/02/06 21:04:43 1

3 POTC 40 34.33S 174 08.38E 00065 09.6 355 14.8 00016 +00001 5.0 5.0 15/02/06 23:10:56 4

4 BRA1 40 25.49S 173 47.53E 00081 08.0 368 15.3 00032 -00001 4.0 4.0 16/02/06 00:56:00 5

5 ABN2 40 27.92S 173 31.57E 00089 06.9 366 15.2 00040 +00000 3.0 3.0 16/02/06 01:45:06 2

6 ERIC 40 14.26S 172 58.44E 00117 09.1 369 15.4 00068 +00001 2.0 2.0 16/02/06 04:56:27 6

ABN1 ABN AMRO ONE
ABN2 ABN AMRO TWO
BRA1 Brasil 1
ERIC Ericsson Racing Team
MOVI movistar
POTC Pirates of the Caribbean

DTF: distance to finish, SMG: Speed made good, DTL: distance to leader,
DTLC: distance to leader change; the difference between the distance from the boat to the leader taken at the time of the last six hour poll, and the distance from the boat to the leader at the previous poll

PLPTS: projected leg points
PTP: projected overall points
OVERALL: projected position in race overall if yacht maintains current position