ABN AMRO One on the gravy train

Mike Sanderson and his team extend and extend and extend

Positions at 1600GMT

Pos	Yacht	Skipper	Latitude	Longitude	SMG	CMG	DTF	DTL	DTLC
1	ABN AMRO ONE	Mike Sanderson	41 57.36S	55 10.36E	21.5	91	4262	0	0
2	Pirates of the Caribbean	Paul Cayard	41 16.19S	51 34.55E	13.8	79	4427	165	-50
3	ABN AMRO TWO	Seb Josse	41 11.43S	51 26.49E	13.8	80	4434	172	-50
4	movistar	Bouwe Bekking	40 29.28S	50 25.27E	14	67	4488	226	-59
5	ING Real Estate Brunel	Grant Wharington	43 05.33S	46 49.00E	8.6	38	4656	394	-77
6	Brasil 1	Torben Grael	33 57.57S	25 38.03E	0	0	5736	1474	-128
7	Ericsson Racing Team	Neal McDonald	33 57.32S	25 37.57E		0	5737	1475	-128

Yesterday morning ABN AMRO ONE was leading leg two of the Volvo Ocean Race with a comfortable 33 mile margin. This afternoon, 36 hours later, she has managed to pull out a 165 mile lead, 110 miles over the last 12 hours and looks set to continue this trend for at least another 24 hours.

The reason is that Sanderson and his crew on the black boat have managed through being just that little bit ahead of the chasing pack, to stay to east of a cold front that has been creeping up on the fleet from the west. While ABN AMRO One is making speeds regularly in the mid-20s in 22-26 knots and relatively flat water, so those astern have less breeze from the southwest and a lumpy confused sea state churned up by the 90 degree wind shift. Hence they are only making around 13-14 knots.

This situation has not come easily for the ABN AMRO One crew as skipper Mike Sanderson explained earlier: "Yesterday we had a pretty stressful day racing the front because the conditions started to get changeable and fluky and there seemed to be a lot of wind sheer and gradient, so we weren't achieving our nav polars and that was making us get a little twitchy. We were checking the endoscope for weed and trying to find out what the hell was going on but it just meant the front was closer [than we thought] and there was a lot of gradient in the breeze and it wasn’t touching down. So it made for an interesting night. We were down to 6-7 knots of breeze and were even parked at one stage..."

Fortunately they were saved as a tiny breeze filled in. In the early hours of this morning they hoisted their big tight luffed A3 and go away again and by sunrise the wind had filled in again from the northwest. "We knew that every inch counted to try and stay ahead of the front," said Sanderson.

Meanwhile everyone else astern is now on the southwestern side of the front and are now at the mercy of the speed of the front, which appears to be slowing. "The routing thinks you can repass the front," says Sanderson of the predicament of his competitors, "but none of us on board have ever known anyone to be able to do that. On the back side [of the front] you just keep bumping into it. So you’d get good breeze, like movistar did and then you bump into the ridge and as we all know it is an impossible route through it, even for the maxi-cats. Brian Thompson was saying he hasn’t managed to get through one on a maxi cat and Stan [Honey, former navigator on Steve Fossett's PlayStation] was saying the same. I don’t think it is going to be possible on these ones."

The forecast for this area of ocean seems to be fairly inaccurate but is indicating that in around 48 hours time the orientation of the front just to the west of the second ice waypoint gate will be more west-east. To the north of the front (ie north of 40°S) will be favourable northwesterlies, to south will be easterly headwinds... Once through to the northwesterlies all the boats will be up to full speed once again for a prolonged period.

Simon Fisher reports from on board ABN AMRO Two :

Life has been pretty frustrating for the last day or so, we have been battling with light to moderate air now for what feels like an absolute eternity. With the breeze shifting every couple of hours and constantly changing in strength we are averaging a sail change every couple of hours this means dragging everyone out of their bunk and up on deck to do the sail change. The conditions outside have continued to deteriorate as well there is now constant heavy drizzle, thick fog and the temperature continues to drop despite our relatively northern latitude. The net result is a boat full of tired wet people bored with the light air! Not to mention a navigator with slightly more grey hair than he started with having done nothing but worry about the weather for what feels like forever.

All this wetness and tiredness would all be quite bearable if we were hurtling down wind at 20 knots but instead we are plodding along at a rather more sedate pace. Thus we get to the real reason of all our frustration: 24 hours ago things were going well, we had got to within a mile of the Pirates and were looking good to pass them on by, our lead
over movistar was slowly increasing and we were still in touch with the black boat - just.
The forecast looked good too: 30 knots on the horizon and some exciting sailing. This was until we got rolled by a massive front - the wind became and light and shifty and we ended up bobbing around. This would have been tolerable if the front had then passed by and allowed us to hook in the strong south westerlies behind.

However the front has moved at pretty much identical pace to us and we have been bumping into it ever since. The Pirates got away and movistar caught up. To make matters worse the black boat seems to have escaped scot free and on the last sched had extended their lead to 120 miles.

Very frustrating indeed...

We are now left hoping that we can either get back through the front (unlikely) or it will clear out for us allowing us to get back to business of sailing fast in the conditions that we come to the Southern Ocean for!! So far it has felt like a really long Fastnet as opposed a blast across the bottom of the planet!!

However we continue to keep our chins up hoping that each sched will show us getting closer to the Pirates once more. At least they are gong through all the same emotions as us as they battle with the same weather just 7 miles on our beam. With 800 miles to the first scoring gate anything can happen...