Fast pit stop - Earthrace heads for World Record
Earthrace pulled into Kochi, India port at 2.30pm local time yesterday. Refuelling with the help of Kochi Port trust and GAC shipping took just 80 minutes. The total in port time was three hours and fifteen minutes. 
'Earthrace heads for Oman'
TracPlus
Earthrace has now completed 18,351nm of the race route, with a 2,331nm lead on the current world record of 74 days 23 hours and 53 minutes.
During the Kochi stop-over the ground crew fixed an electrical problem - a faulty house battery switch, which had prevented use of the stove on the last leg.
The starboard engine had moved after a punishing trip so Tino de Freitas, the Cummins engineer had to jack the engine and slide back in some shims to correct that problem, luckily the shift was not enough to cause any damage.
Ahead for the Earthrace team is a really tough 1400 miles to Salalah Oman, then on to Port Said in Suez.
The weather charts predict hard wind on the port bow, about the worst conditions for the giant trimaran. This very well could be the roughest leg for the team of the complete circumnavigation.
The wave penetrating aspect of the hull design works best when Earthrace is pointed directly into the seas or close to it. This coming passage is predicted to be at the angle where the wave penetrating aspect is not very effective but the wind will still be forward of the beam.
To complicate things Earthrace has had a slowly leaking starboard sponson. The water collects in a void making the starboard side heavy. This will add another difficulty on this leg because the starboard side will be driven down and into the seas.
Once the sponson begins to weigh down Earthrace begins to become heavy and tends to slew a bit off course causing the rudders to work harder.
This strains the complete boat, but worse is the S curve Earthrace begins to drive is not a straight line so miles are wasted.
Miles are fuel so when Earthrace begins to slew around the boat has to be slowed down to conserve fuel. By slowing down the rudders have less effect thus the 'slewing' is again increased.
At the timne of this report Earthrace was heading west at apeed a little over 14 knots. The ETA for Earthrace in Oman is late Wednesday 18th June.
by Scott Fratcher www.yachtwork.com 
Macquarie Island, TAS
