Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Well, Playing Around Logic are now well and truly up the leader board. They have had a great 24 hrs, and have stormed up the rankings and are now in 8th place overall. They are ahead on handicap of British Soldier, and we are hoping beyond hope that they can stay in 2nd place (or better!) and keep British Soldier in 3rd. If they achieve this, it means that Visit Malta Puma will have won the RORC points championships! British Soldier have to beat Visit Malta Puma by 3 places to overhaul them and take their place on top of the podium, so it is all very exciting and really quite nail biting.
All is well onboard Playing Around, and they now have the bit between their teeth. Skipper Peter is treating each day as an inshore race, so the crew are working extremely hard concentrating on boat speed, boat speed and boat speed. The wind is a little fresher than yesterday South-Easterly 15-20 knots. Class leaders Encore are sailing an exemplary race, and seem to get better every day…..hats off to them.
Visit Malta Puma have not had the best 24 hours, and have fallen foul of light winds through no fault of their own. However, at the 1000 hrs schedule they are storming along at 8.1 knots, with the highest speed of the class so fingers crossed they can now start to claw back some mileage again. If they can overhaul at least Cheeki Rafiki by the end of the race, it would be a fantastic achievement.
The majority of the remaining race fleet are now at various points along the west coast of Ireland, and all are experiencing similar conditions. The weather systems are very static at the moment which means that there are no major developments in the weather forecast for at least the next 48 hours. This means unfortunately there is little opportunity to tactically do something different from the others and take a gamble. However, as mentioned previously, over a long race such as this, even half a knot difference in boat speed can make a huge difference in mileage over 24 hours, so there is still everything to play for. At current speeds, a rough estimate of eta for Playing Around Logic is early hours of Saturday morning. Puma’s tentative eta is lunchtime Saturday. Obviously, these are only very tentative, and will change hourly. I will update these at every blog posting from now until the finish.
Please keep on sending the wonderful messages to the crews – it really does make a huge difference, Keep those positive thoughts happening, and lets wish both yachts a speedy return to the Solent, and come home as quick as they can.
Allie
