Overall leader Isabelle Autissier is up with the leaders in the first week of the second leg of the BOC Challenge
SAILING: Jonathan Spencer Jones
TABLE Bay put on her best with clear skies, sparkling seas and a fresh 15 knot south-westerly and over 300 craft turned out to send the fleet on its way on the second leg of the BOC Challenge single-handed around the world race on Saturday.
Thirteen entrants were at the startline — the 14th, American David Scully on Coyote, returned to harbour minutes before the start with a split mainsail — and after a flyby of 16 Harvard aircraft in formation, the gun fired at exactly 3pm to mark the start of the 6 700 mile voyage. It will take the sailors deep into the roaring forties and screaming fifties as they make for Sydney, Australia.
First over the line was Class II entrant Briton Niah Vaughan on Jimroda II — who also flies the Royal Cape Yacht Club’s burgee — followed closely by a quartet of Class I entries led by Jean Luc van den Heede on Vendee Enterprises and then a quartet of Class II entires led by Italian Giovanni Soldini on Kodak.
Overall race leader Isabelle Autissier on Ecureuil Poitou- Charentes 2 and close rival, second-placed Steve Pettengill on Hunter’s Child followed, starting conservatively but soon moving through the fleet to join Van den Heede for a three-way race for first position.
Within hours, Alan Nebauer on Newcastle Australia had put into Simon’s Town to repair a faulty charging system and Scully, after acquiring a used mainsail from JJ Provoyeur’s Novell South Africa (ex-Ben Vio), had restarted only to have to return to Cape Town yet again to repair the electrical circuit board in the self-steering system.
By two days into the leg, the standing sheet had an air of familiarity with Autissier and Australian David Adams on True Blue at the head of their respective classes, with Autissier in overall lead followed within the space of a few tens of miles by four other Class I yachts.
Within an hour of the start, the penultimate finisher of the first leg, Briton Harry Mitchell on Henry Hornblower, arrived in Cape Town to join Italian Simone Bianchetti and South African Neal Petersen, who had both arrived two days earlier.
These three plan to restart the race within the next few days.
Bringing up the rear, Floyd Romack on Cardiac 88, who started the first leg a week late through attending his daughter’s wedding, has yet to complete that leg.