Marco takes the lead-A day he will never forget

Finally our dive to penguin latitudes paid its dividends and today we
jumped in the lead of the third leg of the Global Ocean Race with a lead
of 30 miles over Cessna Citation who had chosen a more northerly option.
We are still on full time radar watch for icebergs, the risk of finding
one on our way should be progressively decreasing but water temperature is
at the lowest we’ve seen at just 6C, air temperature is 4C and with the
wind chill we had the dubious pleasure of fine snow earlier today.

We are obviously incredibly happy, 6 months ago I would have never even
entertained the possibility of leading the race on the approach to Cape
Horn, we are savouring the moment like a rare whiskey but we are under no
illusion that we will be able to maintain our lead, we will certainly
fight hard but the next 2 days we will have strong wind reaching
conditions probably Cessna’s strongest point of sail, the perfect wind
angle that already saw the new hull establishing a 24 our run record of
359 miles in the previous leg. Whilst enjoying our spell as leaders we
remain on full alert for further opportunities to extend the lead or catch
up should we drop behind again.

For now, this is a day I’ll never forget, I guess my grandchildren will
eventually get sick of hearing the story told a million times over! On a
day like this I inevitably dream of coming back on a brand new boat but
for now don’t we all love a good underdog story?

Posted by: firstclass