The past 24-hours have been the most testing in the Volvo Ocean Race so far, as the fleet battled high winds and a confused sea on leg two to Cochin in India. The worst effected was the Green Dragon team (Ian Walker/GBR), who broke their boom shortly before 1100 GMT this morning. This came after they survived a spectacular Chinese gybe yesterday. PUMA, Ken Read’s red and black boat, has been another casualty. He says wryly that last night would have been great if you were a sailmaker or a boatbuilder looking for work. After blowing their asymmetric spinnaker into pieces, an hour later the boat took off. Seven hours later, and the bow has been repaired onboard, and the spinnaker has been patched back together. Onboard Team Russia, the crew suffered their first ‘real, heavy, full-on massive flat-out broach’. “The boat slowed down almost to a standstill, up to the mast in solid green water.
Positions
Telefónica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) DTF 3513 nm
PUMA Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) +0
Telefónica Black ESP (Fernando Echávarri/ESP) +15
Ericsson 3 SWE (Anders Lewander/SWE) +20
Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) +28
Green Dragon IRL/CHN (Ian Walker/GBR) +41
Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) +80
Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) +86
