Team Holcim-PRB hold a narrow lead as the fleet approaches Bonifacio after a closely fought overnight battle

Team Holcim-PRB hold a narrow lead as the fleet approaches Bonifacio after a closely fought overnight battle

The Swiss team are ahead on the tracker but with Biotherm and Team Paprec Arkéa close behind who will lead into the Bonifacio Strait is too close to call.

After a tense moonlit night of light airs sailing that saw the tightly packed seven-boat fleet sailing line-abreast at times as the crews picked their way south through patches of no wind strewn across their path, today the leading trio Holcim - PRB (SUI), Biotherm (FRA), and Team Paprec Arkéa (FRA) are closing in on the Bonifacio Strait that separates the islands of Corsica and Sardinia.

Biotherm – skippered by Paul Meilhat – took the maximum two points at the Monaco Scoring Gate yesterday evening after cutting inside the fleet at Cape Ferat to snatch the lead from Holcim-PRB – skippered on this leg by Nico Lunven (FRA) who had to settle for one bonus point for passing Monaco in second place.

As the fleet turned south however it was Yoann Richomme’s Team Paprec Arkéa that positioned themselves best as the winds died away overnight, holding speed more consistently than the rest to eke out a tenuous one mile lead during the hours of darkness.

With the breeze down below six knots, concentration was at a premium as the crews tweaked their sail configurations and pored over their navigation screens to try to keep their boats moving south.

When a fresh breeze did eventually arrive around 0200 AM it was the leading group – Holcim - PRB, Biotherm, Team Paprec Arkéa, and Ambrogio Beccaria’s Allagrande Mapei Racing (ITA) – that poked their bows into it first, leaping to boatspeeds in the mid teens to early 20 knots, to quickly extend away from the remaining group made up of Boris Herrmann’s Team Malizia (GER), Scott Shawyer’s Canada Ocean Racing – Be Water Positive, and Alan Roura’s Team Amaala (SUI/KSA).

“So our first night at sea didn’t really go according to plan,” said Team Malizia’s Cole Brauer (USA). “We knew we had taken a risk pretty much as soon as we had left Monaco. We had talked about how we were going to soak low and get on the other side of this low pressure that was moving northeast.

“We took the risk by sailing less distance – which made us look really good in the beginning, but when the low passed us the guys who were off to the west of us got the pressure before we did. They were blasting away while we were just sitting ducks – and that was so disappointing.”

Shortly before dawn, at the front of the fleet, after the leading trio tacked to the east towards Bonafacio, Biotherm and Holcim-PRB, and Allagrande Mapei all closed up on Team Paprec Arkéa.

At 1200 CEST today, Holcim-PRB held the lead on the tracker, but with the other three crews all within easy striking distance. With more light winds ahead and multiple tacks required from all four boats, just who would reach the southern tip of Corsica first remained impossible to predict.

“We can see Corsica,” said Alan Roberts aboard Team Holcim-PRB. “The night has been good. We are in the leading group…making our approach to the Bonifacio Strait. We have just crossed Biotherm – that’s a nice view for us, but there’s a long way to go. There’s going to be lots of manoeuvres now, lots of tacking, a transition. We will probably go into the strait upwind and come out of it downwind. It’s going to be a busy few hours.

The leading group is expected to enter the Bonifacio Strait at around 1500 CEST with the yachts expected to take a southerly route close to the northern tip of Sardinia. The big reward for whoever makes it through first is early access to 10-knot southeasterly winds that will send the leaders ripping northwards towards the Leg 4 finish line in Genova, Italy.