Frustrated of Assa Abloy

Neal McDonald reports of slow progress on the Swedish VO60.

From on board ASSA ABLOY Neal McDonald reports:
Black Tuesday - after fighting for every boat length for over three weeks and going round the final rounding mark off Brazil in second place we then sail into the world's largest hole and park up for a day.

While we floundered around under a clear blue sky and on a flat sea waiting for a new forecasted breeze to fill in our four closest competitors sailed off into the distance. Mother nature has delt us a pretty rough card. After 20 or so unhappy hours we lost a staggering 200 odd miles to the new leaders! Absolutely soul destroying - not quite tears but as good as - all our hard work over the last three weeks evaporating away.

As a secondary blow one day with no progress and a pretty slow forecast for the rest of the way means even more food rationing! Boy are we going to be hungry when we get to Cape Town.

When at last the breeze did come in - much later than forecast - we found our self in a completely different part of the ocean to the top four boats.

We have started moving at a reasonable speed but the leaders are currently in a different system and are still pulling away - the rich get richer and we are not that well off.

Our initial game plan, somewhat destroyed by our 24 hour park up, may still come good but it is going to be a slow and painful process. We still have over 2000 miles to go and by slogging it out we may be able to slowly crawl our way back into it - let's hope so.