The leaders are halfway around their global course as they enter the Pacific Ocean but well behind the timings of the 2016 race.
They have been greeted by a patch of light winds which enables the second group to close up. Yannick Bestaven’s Maître CoQ still holds the lead but it is down to 100 miles this morning. Charlie Dalin on Apivia appears to have made repairs on his foil problem and has gone back to fast sailing. He has moved into second position taking 48 miles out of Maître CoQ in the last 24 hours. LinkedOut has slowed right down after her forward hatch opened and flooded her bow compartment. Louis Burton in Bureau Vallée is going to get into the lee of Macquarie Island on Saturday evening so he can climb his mast and effect repairs to his mainsail track which secures his sail to the mast. He has tried to do it whilst racing but found the constant Southern Ocean swell threw him around too much and made the task impossible. Now lying in seventh place he is clearly frustrated at having to sail with two reefs in his mainsail. As anyone who has climbed a mast at sea knows, the real trick is to secure yourself to something that prevents one being thrown around, but it is not an 100% solution. Jean Le Cam lies fourth, almost 417 miles behind the leader, reduced from nearly 500 miles yesterday.
Pip Hare is still holding 18th and Miranda Merron 23rd
In Auckland, INEOS Team UK had sorted out its problems and raced twice against Team New Zealand. They lost both, but were showing some signs of good speed and Ben demonstrated his abilities at the start of the second race by completely out playing the Kiwis. Still development work to be done, but they got nothing from the first two races. The racing was fantastic to watch, real match racing, but watching it is doing nothing to alleviate my sleep deprivation!