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Global Ocean Race Leg 5 - Day 5

by Oliver Dewar
23 May 2012

Un-readable conditions continue in the Gulf Stream

While Tropical Storm Alberto has failed to materialise, the four Global Ocean Race (GOR) Class40s have encountered a gaping hole of light wind 260 miles off the coast of the USA as the boats push east into the North Atlantic.

At 10:00 GMT on Wednesday, Marco Nannini and Sergio Frattaruolo relinquished their lead with Financial Crisis as the Italian-Slovak Class40 began to slow down while Conrad Colman and Scott Cavanough held onto the breeze on Cessna Citation further north, building a lead of 19 miles by mid-afternoon.

Meanwhile, trailing Nannini and Frattaruolo by 84 miles at 15:00 on Wednesday, Phillippa Hutton-Squire and Nick Leggatt on Phesheya-Racing in third have kept a 13-mile lead over the Dutch father-and-son duo of Nico and Frans Budel with Sec. Hayai, but the Budel's are averaging one knot faster than the South Africans as they enter a zone where GRIB files are currently predicting less than four knots.

On Cessna Citation, Colman and Cavanough were still averaging slightly under eight knots as the windless area ballooned across their path on the weather files: “Welcome to the world of pogo-stick sailing,” commented Colman on Wednesday morning. “Since leaving the welcoming confines of the Charleston Harbour we have been bouncing continually and the first night was truly horrendous - lightning flashes wrought the sky at scarily frequent intervals, its booming thunder drowned out only by the cacophony of our boat's impact with the waves.”

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