In the America's Cup, the damage to the American Magic boat dominates the news and no doubt we will find out more in the next few days. There is large hole in the hull, just forward of the port foil, which was allowing water to enter the boat. That it sank to the point of being waterlogged is a worry as what is inside the boat are all the technical bits that make the boat fly on its foils.
They have four days to fix the problem or skip the next Round Robin. We will learn more in due course. I have sailed with Dean Barker once, and he is a pretty steady bloke, but you can hear Paul Goodison, the tactician, challenging the plan to tack and then bear away. But where Dean Barker was in the boat at the moment of decision may mean he could not see what Goodison was worrying about.
Last nightfall in the Vendée Globe, all the leading boats were suffering from light winds in the Doldrums. Bureau Vallée was the first to cross the Equator, but this morning Apivia is in the lead by 41 miles. Those two have stretched out a bit from the rest as they found the NE Trade winds first, but there are still only 225 miles separating No 1 from No 9. They were so close to each other that even a short puff of wind can make the difference.
In the1978 Whitbread, there were three of us, Maxis in sight of each other, myself on Condor, Eric Tabarly on Pen Duick VI and Great Britain II. You could see the other boats get a small puff and pull ahead, and then we would get a puff and catch up. When we got into the NE trades, Tabarly went ahead as his boat was better to windward. Studying the weather, I turned NW, 120 degrees from the rhumb line for the finish, but so I could pick up the next Atlantic Depression. I had to wait two days before that wind arrived but in the meantime Tabarly was stuck in the Azores High Pressure calms. We beat Tabarly to the finish line by just 4 hours, but we were the first to finish that final leg of that Whitbread Race. That was all that mattered.
The same matters to these guys. They are so close that it is not safe to predict the final finishing positions. Ahead of them is a ridge of High Pressure, level with the Canary Islands which will extend to the Azores by Friday. They need to get north of that.
Pip Hare is making better progress this morning, almost level with the River Plate and Miranda Merron has rounded Cape Horn, but is currently almost stopped. The final two boats in the fleet have some 1,700 miles to go to the Horn.
Maxi Edmond de Rothschild continues to make very good progress, now almost at the Latitude of Cape Town, and more than 400 miles ahead of the target. It is showing 37 knots of boat speed, so all the fast boats are not confined to Auckland Harbour!