First in, first out?
With the fleet needing to traverse an area of no wind before getting to the Porto Santo, the leaders are hoping to maintain their advantage through the wind drought...On Vestas 11th Hour Racing, it's been a tense 12 hours overnight, as they've seen a hard-earned lead over the first 60 hours of the race get whittled away.
But overnight, skipper Charlie Enright found solace in the 0100 UTC position report.
"Whoa! We gained back a bunch on everybody," he said, after downloading the position report.
"It's been tough watching the whole fleet come into us, even though we knew it was going to happen. Hopefully it's 'first in, first out'... Maybe we're seeing some of that right now."
After falling into a dead heat with MAPFRE, who have opted for a much more northern routing - hoping more speed will overcome the greated distance required to get to Porto Santo - the Vestas crew is again adding to its lead.
But it's still a treacherous path forward to get to Porto Santo as seen by MAPFRE, who were looking strong in the north, but were then swallowed up by the wind hole and saw their speed drop off a cliff. On the 0700 UTC report, however, they were back up to speed and on pace again.
What happens on Wednesday will go a long way to determing who rounds Porto Santo with the advantage.