Race 13 Day 6: Henri Lloyd sets time to beat as the Ocean Sprint continues

Henri Lloyd has set the time to beat in the Ocean Sprint as the final teams start their campaign to win those all-important two bonus points in the Grange Hotels Trophy.

With the top five boats in the Clipper Race fleet having now completed the Ocean Sprint, race leaders Henri Lloyd set an impressive time of 12 hours 56 minutes and 33 seconds to beat. GREAT Britain is currently second with a time of 13 hours 7 minutes 17 seconds, followed by OneDLL, Switzerland and Derry~Londonderry~Doire.

Skipper of GREAT Britain, Simon Talbot, couldn’t hide his disappointment after the curse of the Ocean Sprint struck again for the team, as they narrowly missed out to their arch rivals Henri Lloyd.

“Well they say that all good things must come to an end and for us it certainly has. We had a great day’s sailing through the Ocean Sprint, looking for most of it like we would set a faster time than Henri Lloyd, but with about 25 miles to run, the squall randomizer found us and unfortunately we were the loser this time.

“I think we  lost about 1.5 miles to Henri Lloyd, which was enough I believe to give them a faster time through the sprint than us, but we will just have to wait for the official results to find out for sure.”

With three teams still left to complete the Ocean Sprint which is situated between the lines of latitudes 30N and 32N, tactics are being deployed as Old Pulteney has elected to activate Stealth Mode. Skipper of Old Pulteney, skipper Patrick van der Zijden describes the tough crossing:

“We are still in the Ocean Sprint, but with our extended drifting session,  we saw other boats extend their leads. We do not have a lot of hope for good results, and we will be glad when it's over because that means we then have reached the Gulf Stream, that would be our freeway to New York.”

Old Pulteney’s position will be hidden from the rest of the fleet and the Race Viewer for a period of 24 hours and will be published again at 0000 UTC Saturday 31 May. Meanwhile Derry~Londonderry~Doire has also requested to activate its Stealth Mode from 1200 UTC today. The team’s position will be broadcast at 1200 UTC Saturday 31 May.

This morning it was announced that due to the continued light winds, Race 13 had been shortened and Invest Africa had accepted twelfth place and 1 point. Team Garmin, Qingdao and Mission Performance had also accepted, eleventh, tenth and ninth place respectively.  To read the full story please click here