SunGard Front Arena vs Phesheya Racing, the battle is on

We set off just over fours ago for the third leg of the Round Britain
and Ireland race, we are currently leading first overall, and will have
the challenging taskl of trying to keep ahead, with a challenging
weather forecast ahead, winds will die down to nothing later tonight
before swinging 180 degrees and filling in for was we expect to be an
awesome trilling spinnaker run to Lerwick in the Shetlands some 450
miles away, but first we have to got through the light wind band and
chase the new wind coming from the west.

When we woke up at 2 am a freezing northerly wind was blasting over
Castle Bay at 25 kts, with sleepy eyes we made our way to the start line
with the difficult call of whether to fly a spinnaker towards Barra
head.

The wind eased off a bit just before the start so we popped the
fractional kite and did a very decent, on-time crossing of the line...
the wind was anyhow gusty and it got quite exiciting on the way down,
speeds in excess of 14 knots, several narrowly avoided broaches (that's
when you lose control of the boat in strong winds and you are flattened
on one side in a mess of flapping sails)... Then hit by a gust we wiped
out, got things under control and decided to drop the kite to avoid any
damage and use mainsail and headsail to the headland... Meanwhile
Phesheya was tracking behind at great speeds, they saw us dropping the
kite but hung on, the wind actually eased off and they clearly were
better off with the kite up and by Barra head they had almost caught us
up... by the headland however we were ready to harden up towards St
Kilda and by the time they took the spinnaker down and hoisted their
headsail we had put again some space between us.

Now we are beating to windward to St Kilda, we are tracking along at
almost identical speeds and there's never more than a few hundred yards
between us and Phesheya, amazing! Although truth be told i think they
are catching up...

The wind is progressively expected to decrese as we beat towards St
Kilda then we'll have to face the ridge of light airs... Positions in
the fleet can greatly change in light winds so it will be certainly one
leg to follow!

The rest of the Class 40s started between 2.5 and 3.5 hours behind, the
margin we had gained on them in the second leg.

You can follow our progress on the excellent new race website at
www.rbandi.com