What a blast

As Amer Sports One peels off to collect medical supplies the rest of the fleet is reaching a critical point in the race

In theory at least, race leader SEB will lose the breeze first. With the other boats able to monitor her progress every six hours the opportunity for one or more of the perusing pack to simply sail around her will be ever pressing on the crew. "Next sked we will most likely have lost our lead and it will take a lot of work to get it back. Especially when it looks better in the south in the near future. Longer term we can get some back by being north," says SEB skipper Gurra Krantz.

In the short term however, broken spinnakers are the key issue for SEB. "After the last couple of days of sailing with raging sails and a boat totally on fire we now find ourselves banging straight into waves when running," reports Krantz from onboard.

"After a couple of hours we had blown out two chutes. Not a good record but it is a difficult judgement whether or not to sail with masthead chutes under those conditions. We opted for the aggressive approach with max power and now we pay by sailing with a fractional one in lighter running condition. We have to do this while waiting for the sail makers to put the big one together. We were very fortunate they could accommodate drop-in customers."

After further research, Krantz found out that the spinnakers had not just ripped due to the boat slamming in waves. A sharp spreader end proved to be the culprit. "We found that the spinnakers did not blow up by themselves, they loose the pressure in a wave, get sucked in by the mainsail and hooked and ripped on a spreader tip, then the rip goes right across the sail."