Issue date
The sole kiwi competing in the Barcelona World Race, Conrad Colman (sailing with Nando Fa on Spirit of Hungary) was noted as having the biggest cause for celebration in the latest race report, as the fleet negotiate the area around the Canary Islands.
Nandor Fa and Conrad Colman who were finally on a SW’ly course in the Atlantic, double digit velocity waking up their speedo this afternoon as they broke into a decent northerly breeze. Straitjacketed for days by very light winds in the Alboran Sea and off Gibraltar they now have a good forecast to crank up Spirit of Hungary steadily to see what the IMOCA 60 that Fa designed himself, is capable of.
Colman laughed today that they had agreed to open one of their three celebratory bottles of Spanish Cava as they passed into the Atlantic. Supposed to be one each for the three Great capes of the course, Good Hope, Leeuwin and Horn, as a Kiwi Colman quipped he would forego the Aussie cape, like Thomson looking for the reward here and now!
Colman says; "It is nice to have escaped, finally, just fantastic. We are now going to make this race about passing the three great Capes and Gibraltar. We consider that passing Gibraltar was a significant milestone in our race, and as a consequence we won’t celebrate going past Australia, because as a Kiwi, well......So we had three small bottles of Spanish Cava for the Capes and we opened one of them when we were finished with the Gibraltar Straits because we felt we needed a little celebration and boost our morale to tackle the Atlantic.
“The forecast now is great, once it fills in. It has been nice in some ways that the fleet have waited a bit, but I think that is good of them. But they started the party again last night with plenty of wind but we still have 350 miles to catch up with We Are Water, so we won't even talk about the others at the moment. We still have a lot of work ahead of us.”
“The boat is in great shape now, better than when we left the dock. We have been able to finish up a few little jobs, so we are in great shape and ready to go....we just need some wind...We have two bags of oranges. We are in race mode now, on race food but no wind to race!”
Alex Thomsen and Pepe Ribes, on board Hugo Boss lead the race.
Ranking at 14:00 UTC TUESDAY 6THJanuary 2015
1 Hugo Boss (A Thomson – P Ribes) 22,230 miles to finish
3 GAES Centros Auditivos (A Corbella - G Marin) +25.3miles to leader
2 Neutrogena (G Altadill – J Muñoz) +41.2 miles to leader
4 Cheminées Poujoulat (B Stamm - J Le Cam) +48.1 miles to leader
5 Renault Captur (J Riechers - S Audigane) +106.3 miles to leader
6 One Planet One Ocean & Pharmaton (A Gelabert – D Costa) + 172 miles to leader
7 We Are Water (B Garcia – W Garcia) + 251 miles to leader
8 Spirit of Hungary (N Fa - C Colman) + 625 miles to leader
