”Watch out!”

The start was extremely intense and tricky with very light shifty winds and irritating swell.

But it was to change pretty quickly.

Soon after the leeward rounding we were reaching along in about 20 knots of wind and the same boatspeed. We got overtaken by Puma in the  rounding and after that she gained on everyone and no, 19.00, she is  in the lead, around a mile before us and a bit less on Telefónica  Black and Ericsson 4 who are a couple of 100 metres ahead but down to  leeward.

We are pretty concerned about the guys on Telefónica Blue, who hit a rock soon after the leeward rounding.

”Blue just hit the bricks! Watch out!” Richard Mason shouted just  after he saw the Spanish boat dive and then heel.

We all hope they are all well onboard. To go from 15 knots to 0 can cause some serious headaches.

It still pretty wet out here and we are still steadily doing over 20 knots. We will soon put the A4 up for a couple of miles when we get on to the narrow parts. Next hours will be interesting.

More to come soon.

Gustav Morin - MCM