After 21 days in the Brazilian port of Fortaleza, Kiwi skipper, Graham Dalton, restarted racing in the VELUX 5 OCEANS on April 5 having overcome technical problems and poor health that would have broken weaker men.
After 85 days at sea, Dalton and his Open 50 A Southern Man - AGD are heading north towards the finish line of Leg 2 in Norfolk, Virginia. The latest position poll shows Dalton is 300 miles east of Barbados, the easternmost of the Caribbean's Leeward Island chain.
While the Kiwi skipper fought a string of potentially catastrophic setbacks in port, he had to watch Unai Basurko and Pakea cross the finish line in third place after 68 days at sea and his rival, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston on SAGA Insurance, overhaul A Southern Man - AGD taking fourth place and sailing north to finish Leg 2 after 75 days. For many ocean racing yachtsmen these events would have been demoralising: Dalton, however, feeds off adversity.
The prospects are good expecting to be in the next leg I fully expect to be on the finish line.
The tough skipper is pushing his Open 50 hard in an attempt to finish Leg 2 by the cut-off date of 19th April in order to qualify for racing in the final leg of the VELUX 5 OCEANS from America to Spain. The race rules stipulate that a competitor must spend a minimum of 72 hours in a stop-over port between legs. In addition, A Southern Man - AGD must start the final leg by the 22nd April, within a week of the official start of Leg 3 on Sunday 15th.
Since Dalton's entire onboard electronic equipment inventory was ransacked as he lay unconscious due to a violent stomach infection shortly after making landfall in Brazil on 14th March, A Southern Man - AGD is being raced with minimal weather and navigational aids.
