4:33 PM Sat 7 Mar 2009 GMT
Seems that Ian Walker has seen the latest position updates - The leaderboard has been turned on its head in the past 24 hours with Ericsson 3 (Magnus Olsson/SWE) seizing control as the fleet reaches the halfway point of this 12,300 nautical mile marathon en route to Cape Horn.
Navigator Aksel Magdahl's gamble on a northern heading, away from the pack and against conventional Southern Ocean wisdom, soon after the scoring gate at 36 degrees south, is paying off for Ericsson 3.
Right I'm in a bad mood today so here are some grumpy quotes for you:
- 'I'm not counting days anymore I'm counting weeks and this is the start of week 4'
- 'It is so long since we have used our spinnaker I'm a bit worried the boys will have forgotten how to set it'
- 'The incessant banging of crashing off waves is doing my head in. It wouldn't matter if we were getting any nearer Rio but we are hardly even managing that'
- 'The lads are complaining that if they had wanted to go round the World upwind they would have signed up for the BT Global Challenge. The Volvo Ocean Race is supposed to go downwind.'
OK moan over. Back to the banging.
Ian Walker - skipper
Volvo Ocean Race Positions - Leg Five, Day 22 Saturday: 1300 GMT
1 Ericsson 3 SWE (Magnus Olsson/SWE) DTF 6152nm
2 PUMA Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) + 110
3 Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) +152
4 Telefonica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) +176
5 Green Dragon IRL/CHI (Ian Walker/GBR) +228
Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) DNS
Telefonica Black ESP (Fernando Ech?varri/ESP) DNS
Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp/AUT) DNS
by Ian Walker
Click on thumbnails to enlarge and find more photos:
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Cape Bruny (Cape Bruny), TAS
