Vendée Globe

The rise of Mike Golding slightly to the west of the leading group seems like a growing threat as he continues to make steady gains.

Tenth on Friday evening, Mike Golding, the British solo skipper has made steady gains over the weekend, showing good speed, to rise to sixth in this morning’s Vendée Globe rankings, seemingly poised to attack the elite group of top five which has been established for five days.

Making a net gain of nearly 14 miles on leader Loïck Peyron since Friday, Golding’s position slightly west of the leading pack and speed helped him rise to within two miles of Armel Le Cléac’h (Brit Air) this morning. Golding has again been quickest over the last 24 hours and since the last rankings were published at 19h GMT last night.

After passing Dominique Wavre, SUI, (Temenos II) yesterday evening, Brian Thompson, GBR (Bahrain Team Pindar) moves into the top 10, partly due to the detour of Jérémie Beyou to Salvador de Bahia due to damage to his spreaders.

Wavre is increasingly under threat from the progress of Marc Guillemot (Safran) who has been second quickest overnight, and is 12 miles behind the Swiss skipper.

In pursuit, Michel Desjoyeaux (Foncia) is 404 miles behind the leader Gitana Eighty and has a course which is 50 miles inshore, to the west of that taken by Thompson and Wavre, and is still 128 miles behind 13^th placed Sam Davies, GBR, (ROXY).

Steve White, GBR, (Toe in the Water) should have crossed the Equator early this morning, the eighteenth skipper to do so. He lies 19^th on the rankings but was about 120 miles closer to the border to the Southern Hemisphere than 18^th placed Unai Basurko, ESP, (Pakea Bizkaia) who is computed to have a more favourable easterly position.

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