Cape Horn by the end of the week

Could the Barcelona World Race leaders be in for one last blow before they exit the Southern Ocean?

Image above courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems and PredictWind. View a bigger image of the overall fleet here. If you can't see the whole of the table below (this depends which browser you use), scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Positions at 0830 GMT

Frustratingly, the battle for first place in the Barcelona World Race is becoming a little hard to follow with the tracking unit on board Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez' Mapfre on the blink (judicious use of the frying pan perhaps). On Saturday Mapfre had closed to a tantalising 10 miles from the race leader, Jean-Pierre Dick and Loick Peyron's Virbac Paprec 3. This morning at 0330 GMT the DTL was back up to 23 miles, but considering that the two boats are in the depths of the Southern Ocean and so far into this race this is still effectively oceanic match racing.

At the latest sched Virbac Paprec 3 still has 1239 miles to go before reaching Cape Horn. At her current speed this should see her reaching there sometime on Friday. Both boats are in the process of complying with the race's final icegate at 52°S and are now free to dive south down to the Horn at almost 56°S, althoug how far they will err into the higher latitudes remains to be seen. Mapfre already appears to have speared off to the south more than Virbac Paprec 3.

In terms of the weather the lead duo continue to sail fast in 30 knot southwesterlies. With a monster depression off Antarctica they are also southwest of a smaller depression. This latter on is due to head southeast over the next 24 hours by which time it will be due west of the Horn and over Tuesday-Wednesday it continues on this path, ending up over the Antarctic Peninsula (the bit which points up towards South America). At this point the leaders pick up the next Southern Ocean depression bowling east. This doesn't quite make it to the Horn as they do, and they are fortunate to be ahead of it, because if they were 500 miles astern they would be seeing storm force winds come Wednesday. Nonetheless, they could still be for a last Southern Ocean blow before they exit into the Atlantic.

While the leaders effectively sail their own race, with 1400 miles now separating first from Pachi Rivero and Antonio Piris on Renault in third, so the next group are not yet at the halfway stage of their Pacific crossing. Since Friday morning there has been a considerable expansion across the fleet with Renault, as an example, losing some 450 miles on the race leaders. The star performers over the weekend have been fourth placed Boris Herrmann and Ryan Breymaier on Neutrogena, who have closed from 120 miles to 51 astern of Renault. The writing is perhaps on the wall for Renault and if the American-German duo can overtake and end up on the podium of this Barcelona World Race then it would be a massive achievement for them.

As mentioned in the report yesterday, the group behind, Estrella Damm and Groupe Bel are in recovery mode having had to deal with driving through the centre of the downgraded Cyclone Aku. This whole group, up to third placed Renault are currently negotiating the south side of an area of high pressure with northwesterlies for Renault and northerlies for Groupe Bel and Estrella Damm. Looking ahead, the front runners in this group are likely to see some stronger winds mid-week on the back of the depression the lead duo are getting to the Horn ahead of.