No doubt about it, Warta-Polpharma is the hero of the day . . . She's racking up 500 miles a day and just took third place from Team Adventure which set off from Cape Town this morning. What's more, the Polish boat is sailing a direct route while broad reaching in an ideal 25 knots of wind from the northwest. She can notch another great performance in her transom!

Warta-Polpharma should hold on to third place for a while because her lead of 30 miles measured at the previous ranking had extended to 69.2 miles at 11.00 pm GMT. And this separation will stretch out more overnight because Cam Lewis's maxi-catamaran is headed into very light easterly winds of only 5 to 10 knots. Cam has to sail close hauled in order to distance himself from the coast and dive into the southeast. He won't resolve this situation easily because an anticyclone located southeast of South Africa is in his path. He's going to have to shave the edge of this zone of fickle zephyrs before he can latch on to the procession of depressions with their westerly winds . . . For the moment, Team Adventure is recording a meagre hourly mean of 3.4 knots. Tonight, Cam Lewis is 3,309.6 miles from Club Med.

And what's going on at the front? Club Med continues to rattle along to her metronomic rhythm. 21.2 knots average over 24 hours, more than 500
miles on the log in a day, a southwesterly wind of 25 knots on the quarter . . . All is well with Dalton & Proffit. It's not hard to imagine how psyched the two Kiwis on board, Grant Dalton (skipper) and Mike Quilter (navigator), must be as they approach Cook Strait and their homeland . . . At 11.00 pm GMT Club Med was 750 miles from the longitude of Cape Leeuwin, the southeast corner of Australia. In 30 days the maxi-catamarans will have reached the antipodes, in other words the opposite side of the world . . . Amazing but true. These 21st Century Clipper Ships persist in showing off their incredible power.

This evening, Innovation Explorer is on the longitude of the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam. Loïck Peyron's maxi-catamaran gybed when south of the Kerguelen Islands in order to climb back up toward the northeast. He's making 20.9 knots average in winds from the west-northwest of 20 knots. Already at latitude 52, Loïck can't go any farther south because down there lie regions of weak and fluky winds. Innovation Explorer is presently 658.2 miles behind the leader. Compelled to retreat farther north and no longer able to lay a direct course toward New Zealand, she'll no doubt give up several miles to Club Med overnight. We'll see . . .

And Team Legato? Oh my! 3.4 knots average over the last 24 hours, 82.7 miles run in a whole day . . . it's the archetypical bad day for a
maxi-catamaran of this ilk . “Sui generis” - At the moment the position was taken, the instantaneous speed of Tony Bullimore's boat was 0.0 knots . . . The boat is immobile, planted in the middle of the Atlantic at 30 degrees South!

PGa

Translation by JMc