The Transat - Awaiting Further 60ft Tri Arrivals Tonight

With the ORMA 60ft multihull podium decided, so spectators at the Boston Harbour Hotel await the arrival this afternoon of Alain Gautier's Foncia in fourth place. This will be the first occasion that the 1992-3 Vendée Globe winner will have finished a major offshore race in his new trimaran.

Further damage due to flotsam occurred overnight when Fred le Peutrec's trimaran Gitana XI suffered a collision breaking off the sacrificial bow of her main hull. Structurally the boat is fine and the former Olympic Tornado sailor is continuing to Boston.

Meanwhile the breakneck battle continues for the lead in the Open 60s between Mike Golding's Ecover and Mike Sanderson on Pindar AlphaGraphics. While the last few days have seen the two boats attached together as if by string, overnight the British skipper was able to pull out a 23.7 mile advantage over Sanderson.
"We were sailing along the edge of a depression, and the routing plan took us right through the bottom half of it," said Golding. "I was a little more headed than expected, and suddenly found myself having to bear away massively. Suddenly I was miles off course - one moment I was matching Pindar on the same routing plan, the next thing I was careering off in a completely different direction, but the routing seemed to have missed this little detail, I don't know why. The long and short of it was that I got such a big windshift, I thought, what the hell, let's give it a try. There was no time for niceties, no time for stacking gear on the new side, I just threw the boat round. I thought I could spend the next two or three hours clearing up the boat, but here I am half a day later with stuff still stacked on the wrong side."

The upshot of this spontaneous decision is that Golding may have finally made the significant break over his Kiwi rival who is now lying to his northeast. The only challenge to Golding and Sanderson is from Swiss sailor Dominique Wavre, the furthest south of the trio of Open 60 front runners, who at the 1300GMT position report today was sailing at more than twice their speed. After skirting to the north of a depression centred some 500 miles southeast of Cape Race, the lead monohulls are in for another beating as they experience strong westerly winds for at least 24 hours from now.

A similarly tight fight is taking place for fourth place between Nick Moloney on Skandia and Conrad Humphreys on Hellomoto. Over the last 24 hours Moloney has extended his lead over the British rookie to 16.7 miles as the two boats skirt the top of the depression.

Among the 50 footers, Kip Stone on ArtForms has recovered the lead in the monohull division after it was briefly grabbed off him yesterday by Joe Harris' Wells Fargo-American Pioneer. In the multihulls Dominique Demachy on the cruising catamaran GiFi is dogmatically holding on to second place while fourth-placed Nootka, sailed by veteran single-hander Mike Birch has been taking miles out of her sistership Great American II of Bostonian Rich Wilson.

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