Better day for Motorola

Conrad Humphreys sends us his first hand report from the VX40 racing in Rio

Second day's racing here in Rio - and with three close races, Basilica's lead has been reduced to 2 points after a consistent day from the Motorola team. A few guest appearances from the Volvo Ocean Rce fleet added a little glamour to the proceedings, but it was business as usual for the two leading British teams as Motorola scored a 1,2,2 to Basilica's 3,3,1.

Race 5
With the tide still ebbing strongly and the breeze stronger in the channel, the whole fleet went left off the line with Motorola-CHR furthest out to the left. Holmatro rounded the windward mark first and opened up a large lead as the fleet suffered from a small calm patch at the base of Sugar Loaf Mountain. Mitch went inshore, where we headed back out towards the breeze and reduced the gap to 15 seconds at the bottom mark. The left side paid hansomely up the second beat and we rounded 10 seconds ahead of Volvo. The final run we pulled and crossed the line nearly a minute ahead of Volvo.

Race 6
A large bang on the startline and over our shoulder we saw that Basilica had broken their mainsheet traveller, leaving Randy Smyth and the Tommy Hilfiger boat to get the best start with the fleet all powered up and heading hard left. He forced us to tack after luffing and controlled the rest of the fleet into the windward mark. Basilica made a great recovery with a little luck from the Sugar Loaf wind hole that had slowed the leaders. It ended Tommy 1st, Motorola 2nd and Basilica 3rd.

Race 7
Final race of the day and we got a cracking start by the committee boat at pace. With Team Basilica to leeward they squeezed us up and managed to open a 15 second gap after we suddenly slowed (I think we caught a bag around the foil) We rounded a few lengths behind them at the windward mark and both set off down the run at pace. The breeze was sitting around 10 knots and we were all one hulling at speeds around the low 20s - just incredible. we through everything we had at Basilica but they held us off to win followed by us and Holmatro.

Today's results:

Pos	Team	Helm	R1	R2	R3	Tot
1	Basilica	Alistair Richardson	3	3	1	60
2	Motorola-CHR	Leigh McMillan	1	2	2	58
3	Volvo Ocean Race	Chris Nicholson	2	5	4	40
4	Tommy Hilfiger	Randy Smyth	5	1	5	38
5	Holmatro	Mitch Booth	4	4	3	35