Volvo Ocean Race: Puma must fend off Telefonica

It's less than 800 miles to the finish in Auckland, and it's shaping up to be a very interesting finish. Although the French Groupama team leads by a comfortable 138 miles, nothing is certain behind them after Puma parked in a wall of rain for almost six hours yesterday and was only travelling at half the speed of the chasing Telefonica. The lead of Ken Read's squad, including the German Michi Müller, dwindled to less than 20 miles.

Skipper Ken Read sent a noticeably frustrated email from on board explaining what had happened: "Everything was going normally, then two rain squalls came straight from hell. Real sucker squalls, with lots of rain and zero wind in them. In the middle of the night. We were travelling well when suddenly a fat green patch the size of Texas appeared on the radar - an area of rain. There was no way round it. We practically came to a standstill twice for almost six hours. Go to the current position of the Racetracker here.

Afterwards, Read philosophised a little about the three-hour position updates that race control sends to all teams. "On the one hand, they make the race exciting. I've often said that this race isn't actually a long-distance regatta, but a series of 3-hour races. A very long series. (...) The updates keep you on your toes, but they are also an emotional rollercoaster. The last few days, for example, we've taken off campers and Telefonica miles in every update with our easterly course. Everyone on board was on top of the world. And then came the two rain squalls. I can say that the two updates after that were probably the worst of the whole race for us. It was like a punch in the gut."

At the moment, Puma is having to stretch itself mightily to stay ahead of the chasers; at the last update, it was just 22 nautical miles ahead and Telefonica was travelling at almost 1.5 knots faster. The expected arrival in Auckland at the weekend promises to be even more exciting, because the weather forecasts are also very different, as Chris Nicholson from Camper explains: "There are two forecast models, one predicts a longer Am wind blow against relatively strong winds for the arrival, another model predicts a rather light breeze from the east". If the second model were to apply, it would even be conceivable that the leader "Groupama" could sail into the wind hole and the pursuers could still catch up.