The two boats arguably with the most to prove, pre-race favourites Toshiba and Silk Cut, which overall lie sixth and seventh respectively, continue to duel as they lead the sprint over the final 290 miles to La Rochelle in France and the finish line for Leg 8 of the Whitbread Round the World Race.
As the race heads for sailing-mad France for the first time, it is the two British skippers, Toshiba's Paul Standbridge and Silk Cut's Lawrie Smith, who have sailed many miles together including the 1990-91 Whitbread, who will be fighting hardest to hang on to the 36.2-mile cushion they have eked out on third placed Chessie Racing.
While Smith's crew will now be back to full inshore race mode - with all the crew on deck catnapping on deck when possible - they will also be willing the all-girl crew of fourth-placed EF Education to their first podium place of the race. Although the girls had a deficit of 31.7 miles on the John Kostecki-skippered American boat Chessie, if they could make third place behind Toshiba and Silk Cut it would allow Silk Cut to improve their overall placing to a possible fourth.
The leading boats had yesterday broken through the wall of high pressure and light winds, and leader Toshiba was fighting hard to fend off the advances of Silk Cut, which was just 1.8 miles behind racing at just over 12 knots. While the boats appeared to be evenly matched Standbridge yesterday reported: ''The different sail programs have resulted in the boats often excelling at different wind angles to each other. We sailed side by side with Silk Cut yesterday. We had on a fractional overlapping headsail, they flew a masthead tight luff gennaker optimised for close-angle sailing. As the wind increased and lowered in strength and swung in direction it was incredible the performance differences in both boats. I guess we have this problem to face right to the finish.'' Latest positions:
1, Toshiba, (P Standbridge, USA) 307.2 miles to finish; 2, Silk Cut, (L Smith, Great Britain) +1.8 miles; 3, Chessie Racing, (J Kostecki, USA), +38 miles ; 4, EF Education (C Guillou, Sweden) +70.3 miles; 5, Merit Cup, (G Dalton, Monaco) +82.5 miles; 6, EF Language, (P Cayard, Sweden) +97.7 miles; 7, Swedish Match (G Krantz, Sweden) +116.6 miles; 8, Innovation Kvaerner, (K Frostad, Norway) +137.1 miles; 9, BrunelSunergy ( R Heiner, Holland) +145.5 miles.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article