"After what has been a good fast race from Cape Town with some good brisk breezes, current patterns ahead of the Heineken Cape to Rio fleet look less than promising.
The South Atlantic high has moved quite far south, which some weather fundis say could mean far more fickle winds. But at least up to report time yesterday the lead boats were still clocking up good 24-hour runs.
Once again predictably Prodigy had the best run of 221 miles, with Gerry Hegie and team on City of Cape Town still maintaing speed to clock 213 miles. But below them the mileages drop back, Ciao Bella 174, Xtra-Link 179, and Cape Storm back to 150, (that's 70 miles less than two days ago) so it seems there are lighter winds ahead, and perhaps even calms.
But Ciao Bella is still hanging on to second place on handicap, but now looking less of a threat to City of Cape Town.
From Prodigy skipper Christ Frost notes that to get a point to point run of 220 miles, they actually cover much more, maybe 270, as the yacht's sail configuration compels them to zig-zag courses. But Frost is confident of moving up the handicap log from their current eighth position. But he could not be happy about a big spinnaker being torn to shreds in lightish winds early yesterday. That was after sailmaker Alex Schon had spent 26 hours handsewing to repair a previous rip. "Now it is just shreds, unrepairable," was Schon's comment. Two spinnakers in three days, nice going.
Navigator Wolf Seitz reckons they will see two days of lightish weather before they can get on a better angle to speed up for the run into Rio
The intrigueing change on the handicap chart is that of Perie Banou II moving into third place, pushing Xtra-Link off the podium and back into fourth place. The wily Australian sea dog, Jon Sanders, 71, now on his eighth circumnavigation, carefully trimmed his sail wardrobe to lower his handicap rating, and had a run of 163 miles yesterday, not bad for a 25-year-old 39-foot yacht.
On Envirodiesel Me 2 Me, crewman Alex Antrobus emailed: "Bobbing about around 400 miles west of Namibia & about 600 miles north of Cape Town. Had a cracking last few days of sailing, sailing about 180 miles a day and in terms of things cracking literally.
"Despite broken and refixed spinnaker poles, snapped halyards, broken shackles & lost sheets, the crew morale is good," he added. The broken spinnaker pole as apparently the reason for Me 2 Me swerving north some days back. Without the pole, downwind sailing was out.
A novice to ocean racing, Saths Moodley, a 58 year old Durban-born economist has only just recovered from his sea-sickness. Was it bad? "Horrible! It was the worse sensation of my life. It took me 6 days to get over." A somewhat tough way to start living a life-long dream"
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