Friday 13th part 2

Barcelona World Race leader Cheminees Poujoulat crosses International Dateline

It is one of those crazy moments that round the world ocean racers cherish, or at least amuses them, the antimeridian, when East becomes West. Sailing eastwards, at one hundred and eighty degrees east, it is not so much Live Another Day, as Live the Same Day twice. The clock goes back 24 hours and the day happens again...in theory!

For Bernard Stamm and Jean Le Cam, nine circumnavigations between them, passing the Antimeridian today is merely another nice reminder that they are homewards bound, closer to the finish than the start. Still making speeds north of 20 knots and racking up 460-470 miles 24 hour runs, the Barcelona World Race leaders passed the Antimeridian at 1415 UTC today.

So at 0215 Friday their time, they revert to 0215hrs Thursday. They narrowly miss being able to claim Friday 13th part 2...

Stamm and Le Cam's margin over second places Neutrogena has doubled since Guillermo Altadill and José Munoz made the tough decision to pitstop in Invercargill, on New Zealand's South Island early yestrday morning. The Spanish-Chilean partnership have had a rough time, with winds of more than 40 knots yesterday and big seas, as they make for the Kiwi haven.

"The guys have been taking it a little bit easy and careful given the conditions, they don't want to break anything on the way in, but we will be ready for them," said Ross Daniel, Technical Director of 5 West, the team which owns and manages the IMOCA 60 programme. "We are set up for hopefully a fast repair, looking to ensure they dont take a second longer than the mandatory 24 hours. They have not been asking for anything other than the repair, they dont seem that bothered about comforts like showers and hot food, they just want to get on with it and get back out there."

Neutrogena is due in for their pit stop early Friday morning UTC. A technical team comprising local Kiwi experts and a member of the 5 West shore team will be on the dock.

The Neutrogena team remain positive that they can be back on the race course swiftly, maintaining second place ahead of GAES Centros Auditivos. Anna Corbella and Gerard Marín were still 934 miles to the west of Neutrogena, having just sailed 406 miles in the last 24 hours.

The GAES Centros Auditivos crew should pass in to the Pacific tomorrow, Friday.

Renault Captur's Jorg Riechers and Sébastien Audigane remain about 285 miles behind GAES Centros Auditivos. Audigane said: "It is going well. We are a bit tired this morning. We had a problem with a gennaker sail yesterday adn we had to take it down and fix it. We had good materials, big self adhesive sheets of kevlar and we bond that with sikaflex on to the sail. We dried it an hour by running the engine, and then it was up and back in action.

"Today we have a strong northwesterly wind, 25 to 35 knots and some seas which are well formed. Renault Captur is going fast, between 16 and 23 knots. Our biggest problem is when we get cross seas, like the northwest wind and southwest swell you get when the depression is in the south.

"Our biggest difficulty was three days ago when we suddenly had gusts of 60 knots. We had the smallest sails we can have. We took three reefs and the smallest jib. The seas were also very, very big. It was tough going, with the cold and tiredness. We really had to stick together as a team to get through it. We were changing watches every hour. And now we are bit fatigued."

The Frenchman however noted wryly in an email that their 42 days to Cape Leeuwin felt slow compared to his 50 days Jules Verne record breaking circumnavigaton on Orange II exactly 10 years ago. With a 13 man crew skippered by Bruno Peyron that actually included race leader Bernard Stamm and Barcelona World Race Director Jacques Caraes, Audigane was part of the team which set the mark at 50 days, 16 hours, 20 minutes and 4 seconds, achieving an average speed of 22.2 knots.

On We Are Water, Bruno and Willy Garcia are due to pass Cape Leeuwin this afternoon in fifth place. One Planet One Ocean's Aleix Gelabert and Didac Costa are emerging from a period of very strong winds and big seas, their first big Southern Ocean storm. And Nandor Fa and Conrad Colman have now passed the Kerguelen Islands and are back up to 17 knots.

Colman reported: "We are enjoying our summer holiday in the Southern Ocean. We are clearly not here to win the race. We started on the back foot by having a boat which was not completely prepared and not having trained together and so the reality is we need to find other ways to motivate ourselves and other ways to find satisfaction for being here. We have had a few technical problems which are just the normal growing pains for a new boat like this. Instead of being upset about things which go 'bang'. Nandor and I are finding a great deal of satisfaction in repairing the situations that we find ourselves in, and simply staying out here. We have had a number of problems which could very easily have had us running to land as well. I am sorry to see Neutrogena having to make a techncial stop, but we are finding a lot of satisfaction in staying out here. We are always finding ways to improve, to improve ourselves and the boat for next time, which I ho pe will be, for both of us, the Vendée Globe."

Nandor Fa added: "There is a lot of floating objects in the seas. We found a huge fishing net earlier. We found whatever it was nearly broke the rudder. There are too many things floating in the ocean, it would be much better to have a clean ocean. As far as we can, we take care of ourselves and the seas."

Positions at 1400 UTC: 

1 Cheminées Poujoulat (B. Stamm - J. Le Cam) at 11.034,2 miles from finish
2 Neutrogena (G. Altadill - J. Muñoz) + 615,4 miles from leader
3 GAES Centros Auditivos (A. Corbella - G. Marín) + 1.549,8 miles from leader
4 Renault Captur (J. Riechers - S. Audigane) + 1.834,5 miles from leader
5 We Are Water (B. Garcia - W. Garcia) + 2.650,0 miles from leader
6 One Planet, One Ocean & Pharmaton (A. Gelabert - D. Costa) + 3.559,2 miles from leader
7 Spirit of Hungary (N. Fa - C. Colman) + 4.280,0 miles from leader
ABD Hugo Boss (A. Thomson - P. Ribes)