Smelling land

Barcelona World Race leaders due to round Cape Horn any minute

Image above courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems and PredictWind. If you can't see the whole of the table below (this depends which browser you use), scroll down to the bottom of the page.

At the latest sched race leader Virbac Paprec 3 has 37 miles to go before she reaches Cape Horn and begins the long slog up the Atlantic towards the finish line of the Barcelona World Race. Nipping around ahead of gale force winds, the two leaders are among the fastest in the fleet at present, and this should see Jean-Pierre Dick and Loick Peyron passing the Horn, almost certainly in sight of it, mid-morning, followed by Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez on Mapfre around lunchtime.

Already these crews will be eyeing up what lies ahead in the south Atlantic and significantly whether they choose to go up the Le Maire Strait between Isla de los Estados and the mainland, then leaving the Falklands to starboard on the more direct route north, or whether they stay in the south leaving Estados and the Falklands to port. The present forecast shows no reason why the lead duo shouldn't take the former route as over the weekend an area of high pressure is situated off the Argentinian coast and as this shifts east it will leave them on the wind until a front passes on Monday night, backing the wind into the south. There seems to be no advantage of going east.

While the front runners are smelling land, so those chasing still have one third of the Pacific section of the Southern Ocean ahead of them and are soon to pass the final ice waypoint gate. With a giant depression to their southeast, this group is continuing to stay north, away from the worst of it, all currently making fast progress in the near gale force winds: Proper Southern Ocean conditions. As the depression is forecast to disappear to the southeast, so conditions are set to abate before the next depression arrives on the scene at the weekend.

In this mid-group, positions have remained reasonably stable over the last 48 hours with Neutrogena continuing to attack Renault's third place, the American-German duo of Ryan Breymaier and Boris Herrmann at present taking a more southerly route to the Spanish veterans, their deficit still just 21 miles. The only boat to drop back in this group is Dominique Wavre and Michelle Paret on board Mirabaud, who have lost 100 miles on third placed Renault over this period.