After 13 days at sea and a very demanding 2,000 miles of racing in Leg 4 of the double-handed Global Ocean Race (GOR), the leading Class40, Cessna Citation, has crossed the Celox Sailing Scoring Gate off the coast of Brazil netting the maximum six points and coming close to crossing the boat’s outbound track made on GOR Leg 1 from Palma, Mallorca, to Cape Town seven months ago.
Although Conrad Colman and Scott Cavanough took Cessna Citation across the Celox Sailing Scoring Gate shortly before midnight on Saturday and freed-off around Ponta do Calcanhar hitting ten-knot averages, it hasn’t been so comfortable for the trio of Class40s further south. The chasing pack were separated by 150 miles at 15:00 GMT on Sunday, led by Marco Nannini and Sergio Frattaruolo with Financial Crisis but as speed averages hovered around eight knots in approximately 14 knots of easterly breeze throughout Saturday, Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire fell into a private weather system on Phesheya-Racing with the South Africans fighting to keep the boat moving as miles were lost to Financial Crisis and the Dutch duo of Nico Budel and Erik van Vuuren on Sec. Hayai.
While Colman and Cavanough added 29 miles to their lead in the past 24 hours and led the fleet by 241 miles on Sunday afternoon, the South Africans have dropped 25 miles to the Italian-Slovak team on Financial Crisis with Budel and Van Vuuren winning 26 miles from Phesheya-Racing as Leggatt and Hutton-Squire recover from the seven-hour ordeal in unreadable conditions.
Meanwhile, at the head of the fleet, for 28-year-old Conrad Colman, triumph at the scoring gate was slightly marred: “Last night we rushed through the Celox Sailing Scoring Gate at ten-12 knots under our Code 3 gennaker before turning around the top of Brazil and again hoisting the big spinnaker,” he reported on Sunday afternoon. “It would be nice to be able to bask in the afterglow of getting more points on the board but, again, the day has dawned with a hot fury, eliminating all chances of basking,” says Colman.
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