While Gunnar Krantz's Swedish Match was in a 290-mile lead on the second leg of the Whitbread Round the World Race and Knut Frostad's Innovation Kvaerner was also similarly comfortably placed second by 176 miles, the rest of the fleet was making very rapid progress with Lawrie Smith's Silk Cut coming within four miles of the 24 hour record with 431.5 miles to noon yesterday.
Smith and Paul Cayard in EF Language were pushing their boats to the near limits and both were experiencing some hefty gear breaking as their boats dashed pell-mell through the bitterly cold waters of the Southern Ocean, driven by westerly winds deep in the Roaring Forties. Both were running at speeds in excess of 25 knots when they ploughed into the back of the wave in front and took vast quantities of water.
The rules allow the boats to stack their sails on the deck as additional ballast to keep the boats upright against the wind and to trim them down by the stern to some extent to prevent the bows from burying. All in all, there will be close to a half ton of sails, lashed to pad-eyes on the deck. When five tons or more of water hits the sails at these speeds, there is danger of them breaking loose and being washed overboard.
Cayard in a report indicated that they had enjoyed an excellent weekend's sailing, but `After dinner, on the way home,' he joked, `we got into a traffic accident.' He explained: `The boat came to a sudden, abrupt slow down, and there was a sound of tearing, crashing and breaking. Then came the call you dread, `All hands on deck'. A large wave had come down the deck and put so much pressure on the sails that they wiped out the back half of the lifelines and stanchions on the port side. One sail broke loose and is lost'.
The same thing happened to Silk Cut as she hurtled through the night at breakneck pace. Navigator Steve Hayles explains, `A solid wall of water swept aft and dragged the sails hard enough to break off every stanchion on the side of the boat leaving the sails hanging over the side. This was a major situation as losing the whole lot meant losing the whole race'. A decision had to be made, whether to take the spinnaker down and slow the boat to make the job easier, or just wrestle with the problem and pray to God that we didn't lose any. `Fairly predictably,' said Hayles, `there was no-one rushing to get the kite down; we were running faster scheds (six-hour position reports) than anyone and we didn't want to give away the miles.' They recovered all their sails.
Swedish Match passed to the north of Kerguelen Island and was 270 miles east of it at noon yesterday as Innovation Kvaerner was even further north and had still to pass the remote French island. Paul Standbridge in Toshiba, at the time the fastest boat in the fleet, was aiming to pass well to the south and EF Language had gybed to go that way too. Silk Cut was 22 miles astern of Cayard's boat but looked set to pass Kerguelen to the north and of the rest only Mark Fischer's Chessie Racing had decided to head deep into the south. Swedish Match had 2,092 miles to go to Fremantle and the fleet stretched back 748 miles from her.
