Winding up the EDS

With five finished and one remaining in the EDS Atlantic Challenge

Fila - "We had a fantastic leg..." :


Nursing a badly damaged mainsail, the Italian yacht Fila skippered by Andrea Scarabelli, crossed the finish line off St Malo at 22:23:05 GMT Saturday, August 25 to take fourth place in the final leg of the EDS Atlantic Challenge.

After sailing a great race, leading for most of the leg until their mainsail disintegrated, the crew were noticeably dissappointed with their placing. "We had a fantastic leg and feel sure that we should have won, but the sails we had were old and it's hard to compete against the other boats," said Scarabelli. "But that is sailing and we must congratulate Kingfisher and the others on a great race."

Fila suffered damage to their forestay on Leg 3 forcing them to retire from the leg and head for Boston, but with those problems behind them they looked set for a fantastic final leg. It was not to be, but the crew were overall very happy with the event. "We look forward to competing in the EDS again," said Scarabelli. "It's a great event. Very tough. Next time we will have a new boat and a good chance to win."

Ecover -

Mike Golding and his Ecover crew had to settle for third place this evening as they crossed the finish line off the breakwater off St Malo, France at 16:17:00 GMT. After 12 days and almost 3000 miles Ecover were just 26 minutes and 50 seconds behind Sill Plein Fruit and 1 hour, 2minutes and 40 seconds after leg winner Kingfisher.

It was always going to be a close run thing and for the last 24 hours any one of the three boats could have taken the leg - but it was the blue boat Kingfisher which emerged first out of the heavy fog that has been sitting over St Malo all day to take line honours in this fifth and final leg of the EDS Atlantic Challenge.

Kingfisher, Ecover, Sill and Fila have been fighting for the podium slots for the last week - with Sill in particular staging a remarkable comeback, sailing the leg with a hastily repaired mast after losing the rig within minutes of the fourth leg, Baltimore to Boston.

The closing 48 hours had been stressful for all the teams with light and fluky breezes on the final stretch home. The positions have changed at almost every poll giving fans watching the website a good idea of just how close this type of racing can be.