Hugo Boss in Wellington for 48 hour Pit Stop

by Event media on 27 Dec 2007
At 00:35 GMT, 27 December, Hugo Boss crossed the scoring gate in Cook Strait. Their elapsed time on the leg was 17 days, 19 hours, 10 minutes. Two and a half hours later, at 03:00 GMT, Hugo Boss stopped racing as they pulled in to the 'pit lane' in Wellington.

Their shore crew was there to greet them and started to work on Hugo Boss immediately - the goal is to have the boat ready for action as soon as the 48-hour minimum stop time is over.

Hugo Boss has arrived in Wellington to make a pit-stop and effectuate several repairs to get their boat back on form for the second arduous Southern Ocean leg of the race. Paprec Virbac 2 is sailing in better conditions than in the Cook Strait which they reported as very difficult - invloving very strong, shifty wind.

Earlier at 12:32 GMT on 26 December, race leader Paprec-Virbac 2 crossed the Cook Strait scoring gate. For this Southern Ocean leg of the course, skipper Jean-Pierre Dick and co-skipper Damian Foxall had an elapsed time of 17 days, 13 hours and 50 minutes, for an average speed of 15 knots.

Temenos II is 1300 miles to the gate, and is reporting much better temperatures - inside the boat it is now 15º, quite a luxury after the south. They are still making good average speeds and even gaining on the race leaders. During the night wind was force 4 and 5 for the fleet with up to 30 knots, the strongest for a few days, as we saw from lower speeds yesterday.

Mutua Madrileña continues to make good progress, chomping up miles from Temenos II at each position report and averaging a couple of knots faster than Dominique and Michele. Educacion sin Fronteras has had to take a sharp turn north to pass through the Australian safety gate, which has meant them losing costly miles; they lost 95 miles overnight to Mutua Madrileña, although currently they are still the fastest boat in the fleet.

Servanne Escoffier and Albert Bargues have put in a hard left turn as they head north to pass through the Australian safety gate. Educación sin Fronteras is heading almost directly North on the 18:00 GMT position report as they close in on the gate.

Position update at 10:00 GMT 27 Dec 2007

1 Paprec Virbac 2 11,084nm
2 Hugo Boss + 214 nm
3 Temenos 2 + 1526 nm
4 Mutua Madrileña + 1922 nm
5 Educación Sin Fronteras + 2946 nm