The latest news from Leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race shows that after a light wind start from Cape Town yesterday Bouwe Bekking and team aboard movistar leads the fleet. Team movistar has opted for an inshore course and holds an 11 mile advantage over Ericsson Racing. Movistar is 38 nautical miles further inshore from ABN AMRO TWO (Sebastien Josse) and Brasil 1 (Torben Grael) who are the furthest from the coast. Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard), Ericsson (Neal McDonald) and ABN AMRO ONE (Mike Sanderson) are locked tightly together, while ING Real Estate Brunel is in this pack but trailing by seven miles.

Chatting from the boat this morning about yesterday’s start Bekking said: “A typical Capetown departure. A very light westerly at the time of the start, and the game plan to start at the boat end worked well. Maybe a tad late with our approach, but at least we had good leverage over the other boats, which meant we had clear air and could do whatever we wanted. I think a lot of the other teams were thinking of the start four years ago, were the opposite side (pin-end) payed of hugely. But not this time, and soon we were in a controlling position, and being off the coast paid of
well.

“It was a bit unfortunate that the mark was laying in the wind shadow of a huge container ship, but at least it gave the spectator some good looks to all the boats as there was absolutely zip breeze as we were drifting. At one stage we were in last place, just to tell something how tricky it was. Finally we made the gutsy call, to sail away from the mark into a small windline, so that we could gain some speed and ‘shoot’ thought the windless zone.

“This worked nicely and from there we sailed a pretty nice beat up the Cape. We had one little mishap, we ripped the radar bracket of the mast, Chris spent half an hour in the rig, to get it off and hopefully we can fix the bracket and put it back on the mast. Brasil was the only boat who could hold on to us, in a breeze of 25-30knots. A last wave to our loved ones on the spectator boat, and off we were. Close to the Cape the breeze died down to 12 knots, and slowly Brasil 1 was gaining on us. Currently we are neck on neck with them in a very light breeze 4-5 knots. In half an hour the sun will come up, and then we can see how the fleet is positioned.”

Current Positions

1st movistar

2nd Ericsson Racing Team

3rd Pirates of the Caribbean

4th ABN AMRO ONE

5th Brasil 1

6th ABN AMRO TWO

7th ING Real Estate Brunel