At 1700 GMT on Saturday, Beluga Racer snatched first place for 19 hours until Desafio Cabo de Hornos regained the lead and held first place despite an unpleasant bump in the night. Felipe Cubillos explains: “José was off-watch, sleeping, although I felt like waking him and sharing the stunning starlight night and stable breeze. Added to which, we had a 2.8 mile lead over the Germans, but with the Brits chasing very fast in the south.” However, Cubillos had a sense of impending drama. “I was listening to some Dire Straits, spinnaker up, 14 knots of breeze, nine knots boats speed and I just felt that when things are this good, it just can’t last.” And so it was, with the bright red Class 40 slamming into an underwater object, coming to an almost complete stop. “I woke José real quick,” continues Cubillos. “My first thought was we’d been caught in fishing gear. Can you imagine the mess? Trying to cut away the net on a moonless night, stuck at sea with the Germans breathing down our necks!”
Cubillos and Muñoz dropped the spinnaker, backed the mainsail and sailed astern freeing Desafio Cabo de Hornos from whatever had entrapped their keel. “As we crept backwards slowly, we saw it. A shark, cut clean in two by our keel fin,” confirms the Chilean skipper. However, the encounter has failed to slow the Latin American team and Desafio Cabo de Hornos maintained a 2.6 mile lead over the Germans on Beluga Racer and a little above three miles over third place Team Mowgli with Michel Kleinjans and Roaring Forty trailing the Chileans by six miles at 1520 GMT on Sunday. “I feel really sorry for the shark and it’s really bad luck,” Cubillos admits. “But after 17,000 miles of sailing our boat, you are able to feel if there’s the slightest problem with her and everything seems fine and we’re back up to 90 percent speed.”
The Portimão Global Ocean Race fleet are riding breeze of around 25-30 knots on top of a low pressure system that is tracking south-east into the Pacific Ocean, although forecasting is unclear. “The meteorological scene for the next few days is completely uncertain,” believes Cubillos. “Right now, we are sailing in breeze that all the weather experts said does not exist, but we will enjoy it while it lasts.” For the Chileans, immediate tactics are simple: “There’s still a long way to race, but our current strategy is simple. Stick close to Beluga Racer and stay ahead of them if possible.” There is, however, a threat hammering along at 10 knots south of the fleet. “The great mystery is Team Mowgli,” confesses Cubillos. “The English boat to the south already has a lateral separation of 65 miles from us and the Germans and, therefore, they are sailing with different winds. My impression is that in the next few hours they’ll take the lead, but it isn’t guaranteed.”