French team pulls ahead

At halfway point of the Archipelago Raid

The third day of the Archipelago Raid has seen a number of boats rejoin the race and one more retirement but tactics and critical weather decisions proved to be the defining factor for the leaders in the third leg.

Once again this morning the F18 fleet, on their quest through beauty, were delayed as the race organisers waited for the wind to set in. It was at 8.05am local time that the fleet set off from the hospitable island of Fejan with one small island to pass before heading out into the Baltic Sea and across to the Aland archipelago.

For the White Knuckles team on their ‘new’ boat and the Voltaren team, it was a good day as they were able to re-join the race after their respective near sinking and dismasting yesterday. For the father and son team on Brass Specialisten (Westergren/Westergren - SWE) it was a busy night last night as they were forced to stop and fix their spinnaker pole and did not arrive into Fejan until 12, midnight. However they were on the start line this morning ready for the trip across the Baltic.

Per Westergren from Voltaren commented: “The mast broke dues to just a small fitting at the bottom of one of the shrouds. We are upwind from the beach so when it came down we just held the jib, like a jury rig, and sailed downwind to the beach to fix it. The rig is now back up and we are pleased to be competing again. It was quite a long leg to here today as the wind died in the middle and we were not so pleased with our result as we didn’t do so well but we re-start here so who knows.”

After a tight start line off the harbour of Fejan navigating the Baltic Sea split the fleet in two with some choosing the left and others the right hand side of the course. For those that chose the left it was to pay dividends as they gained a left hand shift and came out on top when the fleet converged again. Misha Heemshink from Yamaha Red who was second into the town of Mariehamn explains how it went at the front of the fleet: “ We were expecting a left hand shift so we chose that side of the course - it is always nice when a plan works so it was good. There were also a number of other shifts, which we played but the French (Nissan Hobiecat team) were really fast and came back at us. We had a good position on the rest of the fleet so we decided not to take to many risks and stuck with where we were rather than going further out one side. In the end it worked for us, we were surfing into the finish with the French but we managed to overtake them and finish second.”

The teams left Marihamn at 01.35pm Wednesday afternoon to navigate a number of checkpoints throughout the day including Rodhamn, Hasslo, Hummelvik, Kumlinge and tonight will finish on the island of Lappo. They once again notched up around 100 nautical miles during one day of sailing.

The latest points indicate that the French Nissan Hobiecat team of Jean Christophe Mourniac and Franck Citeau have extended their lead over the Dutch duo of Micha Heemskerk and Bastiann Tentij on Yamaha Red. The British Team Blue teams remain mid-fleet.

Overall score at the end of Wednesday:

Pos	Team	Score
1	Nissan Hobiecat FRA (Mourniac/Citeau)	141
2	Yamaha Red (Heemskerk/Tentji)	122.5
3	Nissan Hobicat GER (Gosche/Walther)	106
4	Sundvalls Bygg AB (Ekman/Tempelman)	105.5
5	Team Thule (Strandberg/ Almstedt)	93
6	Wippies (Karto/Öhman)	92
7	Nissan Hobicat SWE (Kjerstadius/Tempelman)	90
8	Catella Racing Team (Johanson/Gahmberg)	89
9	Brossard (Vauchel/Hennix)	87
10	Team Musto Australia (Pellew/Macpherson)	82
11	Team Proustsailing.com (Proust/Motteau)	81
12	Team Ocean (Bourgnon/Gagliani)	81
13	RBSC (Demesmaeker/Thery)	77
14	St Jude Medical (Grape/Gnosspelius)	74
15	Team Blue Oceans(Humphreys/Crawford)	71
16	Team Blue Climate (Eeles/Butterworth)	66
17	GB Glace (Nissar/Schiratzki)	64
18	Nissan Hobiecat FIN (Neuhaus/Koskenohi)	61
19	White Knuckle Express (Karlsson/Groth)	52
20	Karlberg Media AB (Karlberg/Brunnberg)	41
21	KTH(Söder/Rutberg)	39
22	Brass Specialisten (Westergren/Westergren)	36
23	Voltaren(Westergren/Singman)	32
24	Team class 40 NOR(Aasberg/Thoresen)	22
25	Team BEP Marine (Flynn/Middleweek)	22
26	Arc'Teryx (Hållsten/Ekefalk)	14
27	Yamaha Blue (Scully/Bailey)	11
28	Acando (Fahlén/Ahlden)	8
29	Yamaha Silver (Besson/Vandame)	0

More photos on the following pages....