Volvo Ocean Race: On port bow to Cape Town

With the wind from starboard, as it is more correctly called, the three teams remaining in the leg set course directly for Cape Town. With top speeds of up to 30 knots, the New Zealand team Camper achieved the best 24-hour distance of this leg so far, 552 nautical miles.

Co-navigator Andrew McLean describes last night as "flying blind. It was like driving a rally car at 100 kilometres per hour, but on a country road without lights and without slowing down.

However, as the wind shifted to the west to south-west, forcing everyone to jibe and at the same time easing slightly to between 15 and 20 knots at the last stage, the speedometers dropped to between 17 and 20 knots and hopes of beating the record from the previous race are fading. Ericsson 4 managed 596.6 nautical miles on the same leg at around the same time.

Team Telefonica was able to maintain its lead with around 130 nautical miles ahead of Camper, while Groupama is still some 470 nautical miles behind.

Puma motored on to Tristan da Cunha after the propeller caught a net, which could be cut off.