News

The fleet have repeated the success of yesterday with a DMG of almost 1400nm, almost 50nm per crew. The forecast suggests that crews will continue to benefit from Easterly winds for the next couple of days, though they will lighten off. However, Friday may see Southerly winds, before they turn and become Westerlies at approximately 10 knots over the weekend.

QBE Insurance Challenger now solely lead the pairs class and have amassed a lead of 14nm in the last 24 hours over Karukera, while Vivaldi and Patience successfully pass the halfway point. Elsewhere, Ocean Summit have gone into free fall over the past few days, losing 4 places in 5 days. While their mileage is still competitive, as the fleet is still closely packed position are changing all the time – the nine crews immediately in front of them should pass halfway in the next 2 days.

Now over 5 weeks into the race, unless some of the male contingent took a pocket mirror and new Gillette razor there could well be some unfamiliar faces at sea. Add to this the fact that, as has been confirmed in several blog entries over the past couple of days, all men seem to have ginger in their beards there could be one or two very different looking men amongst the fleet.

Finally, Britannia III moved another 72nm closer to Barbados and are now within 2 days of the finish line. At the end of day 36 they had just 138nm to the finish. This will mark the beginning of the end of the 2009 Atlantic Rowing Race with the first of the racing crews due to make land in Antigua in 2 weeks. Following that, crews should descend on the Caribbean island for a further 50 days having completed the World’s Toughest Rowing Race.