Fortunes continue to change with nearly every report from the front line of the eighth leg of the Whitbread Round the World Race as the nine competing yachts head north towards the Grand Banks and Newfoundland heading from Baltimore to La Rochelle in France.
Yesterday it was Grant Dalton's Merit Cup and Briton Paul Standbridge skippering Toshiba which had taken up the running, with Merit Cup leading by nearly five miles from Toshiba.
The various strategies to utilise the Gulf Stream to best effect seem to have been very much a hit-or-miss affair, while the other variable which has influenced the navigators' thinking has been a high pressure system expected to offer light winds which was set in their path to the north.
Dalton, on his fifth consecutive Whitbread race yesterday, reported he was ''out of the influence of the (Gulf) Stream now so that variable has been taken away and one would imagine speeds and positions will start to settle down somewhat. The Stream has treated us well but it's early days with high pressure ahead.''
He added that it was ''still tight reaching under jib, going north as quick as possible until the high pushes to the south of us, then the fleet will start to curve east.''
Overall leader EF Language, skippered by Paul Cayard, was lying in sixth place yesterday still engaged in hunting down their main rival Swedish Match, while Britain's Silk Cut had dropped back to seventh as one of the most southerly positioned boats in the fleet which was stretched across a 113 mile north west -south east front with Toshiba and Merit Cup positioned in the middle of this advancing pack. Latest positions
1, Merit Cup, (G Dalton, Monaco) +2443.5 miles; 2, Toshiba, (P Standbridge, USA) +4.8 miles behind leader; 3, Innovation Kvaerner, (K Frostad, Norway) +24.8 miles; 4, EF Education (C Guillou, Sweden),+32.9 miles; 5, BrunelSunergy ( R Heiner, Holland) +34.7 miles; 6, EF Language, (P Cayard, Sweden) +36.5miles; 7, Silk Cut, (L Smith, Great Britain) +39.5 miles; 8, Chessie Racing, (J Kostecki, USA), +40 miles behind leader; 9, Swedish Match (G Krantz, Sweden) +55 miles behind leader.
ANDI ROBERTSON
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