Quick, quick, slow

The Volvo Ocean Race fleet has to negotiate just one more area of light winds before they reach the north east trade winds.

Aboard Amer Sports One Grant Dalton is looking forward to a long day in light winds

Just got through a night where there were some wins and losses to be made, more by luck than anything else. But the net of it all is, that the first five boats are still in sight of each other after 8 days at sea. This has been an interesting 12 hours for us as well as we have always worried that selecting such a fat boat, we would heavily suffer in these conditions. So far so good but we had always seen a real edge to our narrower Farr boat in light air and you see the same thing in Assa Abloy, her sister ship.

To me the fastest boat on the track is Assa at this stage. They have built a very light boat, close to the edge if you like, and that has given it a heavy bulb. Couple to this that the boat is quite narrower compared to the other Farr boats and you have a good package.

I think also we can be satisfied with our first week's work. In the leading pack, OK for speed and tactically not sharp yet but learning how to best work together. We are also really experimenting a lot with sails and getting to grips with the inventory which to date was more based on concepts than tested data. I have seen most of the sails go up on the other boats now and as expected. illbruck's look really nice. They just seem to keep pulling new sails out the hatch and they are a very slick operation to watch.

It's going to be a long day of light downwind in a fat boat.

Position report... Page Four