It is time to break out the chocolate onboard ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) to celebrate crossing the second ice waypoint last night and passing the first scoring gate on leg two of the Volvo Ocean Race. They have now earned 3.5 points, the first points to be scored on this two scoring-gate leg to Melbourne. Overnight they blew to pieces their big spinnaker which had previously been repaired for a small hole. The onboard sewing machine was put to good use and a few hours later the sail was back in the air, almost as good as new.

As the Dutch team romps away, the wind has filled in from the north-west for the chasing pack of three and speeds have increased after a frustrating time yesterday, when they were sailing upwind with little or no wind at times. “Not that we have really overtaken the front, but the breeze just filled in,” explained Bouwe Bekking from movistar this morning.

ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) has held onto second place from Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard) in third, while movistar is averaging the highest speed in the fleet of 20.5 knots. She is closing quickly on the pirates and is now only 21 nautical miles behind them.

ABN AMRO TWO is 240 miles from the scoring gate and will collect three points if all continues to go as planned, making it a one-two for the Dutch team so far on this leg.

ING Real Estate Brunel (Grant Wharington) is trailing 807 nautical miles behind the leaders having had a difficult day yesterday in the light winds.

Brasil 1 restarted the race at 0948 GMT today after making full repairs to the structural damage to the deck. “Our shore crew has done an amazing job here in Port Elizabeth,” wrote watch leader Knut Frostad yesterday. “The boat is repaired and even stronger than before, so we should be OK and at least a bit more confident in diving south again.”