Fighting for the lead at great speeds on SunGard Front Arena

We have pressed on giving the all in, at some point Phesheya, still
north of us and in a strategically better place was clocking up the
miles faster than we could and our lead was seriously under threat. The
wind was hitting 20 knots for the first times and 20 was the number Paul
and I had agreed upon as to when we would change the big masthead
spinnaker called A2 to the smaller fractional A6 more suited for the
strong winds we were facing.

We've all been there, the racing, when the red mist gets to you and you
dont change down chasing that extra margin... we stayed on the big A2
kite as the wind progressively built up, at some stage we had steady 25
knots true, the top gust I saw while helming was 29 knots... the sailing
has been exhilarating, I set my new top speed on the boat at 19.03 knots
in reasonably flat waters (more is possible with waves).

On the position report at 1600 we had put 4.5 miles between us and
Phesheya, by 1900 we had 11.2 miles lead. The sailing has been extremely
tough, using the autopilot is out of the question and even with all the
concentration and care our hands could put in we must have broached 10
or 15 times, the wind laid us flat on our side, boom in the water,
spinnaker flapping noisily, boat round up into the wind, then slowly ewe
regained control to bear off and go off again at neck breaking speeds
down the next wave.

Alex Bennett on Fujifilm has also been our worry since Saint Kilda as he
was tracking along very fast. At this stage i'd say we are equally
distant from Muckle Flagga, although we should have a slight advantage
at being north of him, the wind is turning clockwise pushing our courses
further south until we'll both have to gybe...

It's hard to tell who will come out top in this battle, 36 miles
separate us laterally so we could end up in different winds making gains
or losing out.

The wind has started to drop, as predicted, so we should be through the
worst and from the high 20s we are now in the teens, all different
ballpark. 110 miles to Muckle Flugga.

The fast sailing of today will certainly remain as a vivid memory of
this race, absolutely fantastic!

Big thanks to all those of you who have sent messages of support through
my website at www.marconannini.com, it really is priceless to break the
tension that builds up after hours on the edge.