The New Zealand team of Matt Goodman and Steve Westlake aboard Telecom Challenge 1 are leading the Ward Evans Atlantic Rowing Challenge by 68 miles. Now with 98 miles to the finish at Barbados, the team’s only concern is holding off second-placed Team Freedom, the Australians, Paul McCarthy and Patrick Weinrauch, who have only just discovered their prominent position.

McCarthy and Weinrauch who have had no communications since the start of the race three weeks ago in Tenerife, were told the good news today when Challenge Safety vessel 47 finally caught up with them.

There have also been some impressive performances in the chasing pack with UK team, Bright Spark and the only entry from the USA, Tom Mailhot and John Zeigler in American Star moving up the field. The secret behind Keltec Challenger’s rallying performance and high mileage over the weekend has also been revealed – a weekly team shave and daily ritual of ejecting dead fish from the boat!

Team 35 – Euskadi have called in this afternoon to explain the reason for their poor progress since re-starting just over a week ago. Xabier explained how his partner Urko had been suffering from food poisoning before they left El Hierro but, not wanting to delay their re-start any longer, they decided to leave regardless. Therefore, Urko spent the first five days recovering and Xabier rowed alone. Having battled with the Canarian currents alone, the same currents which caused Richard Wood to withdraw last week, Xabier finally burnt himself out and has been using the last few days to recover from exhaustion. Both Xabier and Urko have now recovered to full health and hope that their progress will increase over the next few days. They have 2,336 miles left to row.

Safety vessel 24 ‘Ward Evans’ is due to meet team 14, Human Rights later on this afternoon. They will then move straight on to Jonathan Gornall, who’s rowing alone, to re-supply him with food and drinking water. Gornall discovered that a large majority of his food has been ruined by sea water that has somehow managed to get into the deck compartments onboard Star Challenger.