Today's Sailing News 

The Race: Nearing Cape Horn

Club Med is 800 miles from the last of the Great Capes on the course map of The Race. For Club Med it'll be all three great capes, Good Hope, Leuwin and Horn in 41 days! 

Innovation Explorer continues to trail Club Med. The current gap is 910 miles. The main hindrance for the 2nd place boat is a lack of sail inventory. There's not much straight line sailing, but rather a lot of distance eating jibes for Innovation Explorer. 

Team Adventure has put in a good days sail once again. The mostly French team is nearing Tasmania. It looks like Team Adventure will make a short stop in New Zealand to have their satellite communications system worked on. This should not result in a 48 hour mandatory stop.

Warta Polpharma continues in 4th. Their lead on Team Legato is 810 miles, and steadily eddying away. Warta will pass Cape Leuwin this weekend thus ending the Indian Ocean part of the course. 

Team Legato sailed 509 miles in 24 hours. This is a near record for Team Legato in her long high speed world circling career. This outstanding day gained Tony Bullimore's team 35 miles on Warta Polpharma. According to Bullimore the teams strategy is as follows: "We would like to be level with the Poles by the time we get to Wellington, and the crew are pushing hard to do just that" 

All in all for the 5 boats in The Race, it was a remarkable 24 hour display of speed. While there were no records, I doubt there has been a group of boats who have gone faster. The 24 hour distances ranged from 474 for Warta Polpharma to Club Med's 628, which would have neared the all time record a week ago! Team Legato (509), Team Adventure (510) and Innovation Explorer (519) all passed the 500 mile mark. 

Until the Race Class cats were launched the 500 mile mark in 24 hours had been reached only 8 times. Here, we have 4 boats besting it in one day! Just another remarkable showing for the Race fleet. 

Club Med will round Cape Horn and begin the final 7000 miles to the finish which should take around 20 days for the big blue Race Class cat. More on this Monday.  

Today marks the return of Sailing Daily's Times Clipper Update. The 8 boat fleet has left Hawaii for to sail west across the Pacific, off one side of the map and to the finish on the maps other side in Yokohama Japan. 

The leg will see some trade winds sailing to begin with. Then a crossing of the International date line. This will switch the longitude  line on their GPS displays to east.

The distance for this leg is 3750 miles. As a reference point  the outright record for this route is held by Steve Fossett sailing a
60 foot trimaran. His time 16 days an average of 11.29 knots. The fleet of Clipper mono hulls is expected to arrive in around 20 days or so.

Today's Fleet Update:

Leader: Bristol Clipper by 6 miles

Best 24 Hour Run: Liverpool Clipper 169 miles 

Position: Fleet spread from 18 to 22 degrees north latitude. London at
18° did only 74 miles

Current Weather: Gear buster squalls.

Weather Forecast: For now stay north.

Head to the Sailing Daily Forum and discuss sailing!

Today's Vendee Globe Report 

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 Today's Sailing News 

Cam Gram Quote

Team Adventure skipper Cam Lewis is not just a world class sailor 
he's also one of the best sailing writers around. He's writes daily reports/Cam-Grams from his Race Class cat. Here's an excerpt from today's: "It's wet and wild on deck with a humongous big moon, some clouds and squalls. Good surfing waves and definitely much colder. We are sailing with 2 reefs in the mainsail, the Solent raised up a meter on the headstay, lead max outboard and the aft, windward ballast tank full. It has been a good day of downwind sailing with winds over 30 knots for most of it. We have also had excellent waves with lots of good clear sunshine mixed in with big clouds. There are not that many birds about today. I have been using birds as a barometer. When they get scarce it usually means that the barometer is falling and the weather is going to get worse. This is in fact what the forecast has in store for us - more wind for the next two days. There is a big low down south with 50- 60 knots of wind, so we will not be going there."

Vendee Globe Finish

Michel Desjoyeaux is expected to finish the single handed non stop
Vendee Globe race in record time this weekend. Visit the Torresen Sailing
Site for full coverage in our Saturday and Sunday Vendee Globe Reports.