With Bernard Stamm (Cheminées Poujoulat) seeking shelter on the west side of the Auckland Islands to fix his hydrogenerators, Alex Thomson (Hugo Boss) is on his own in the Pacific suddenly pulling away fast in 25-27 knot northwesterlies and closing on the leaders who only have 14 knot westerslies.

Thomson is 818 miles behind, with Stamm 913 miles back and bound suffer major losses now.

The leader Francois Gabart (MACIF) is 22.5 miles ahead of  Armel Le Cléac’h (Banque Populaire) but they are both struggling in 14 knots weterlies and have gybed almost together while waiting for the low pressure system to arrive overnight (their day).

Jean-Pierre Dick (Virbac-Paprec 3) in third is catching too. He has been the quickest in the fleet on Saturday and was averaging 20.2 knots in the last four hours. He has won back 120 miles from Le Clèac’h in the last 24 hours and is 476.7 miles behind the leader.

Jean Le Cam (SynerCiel) in sixth began his escape from Mike Golding (Gamesa), Dominique Wavre (Mirabaud) and Javier Sansó (Acciona 100% EcoPowered). He is 233 miles ahead of Golding now, but the real gains are yet to be made and will be counted over the next 24 hours as Le Cam catches the North wind and the others hit a high pressure ridge south of Tasmania.