Spanish maxi holds round-world lead

Press, 20 November 1989, Page 25

Spanish maxi holds round-world lead

PA Wellington Fortuna Extra Lights, the Spanish maxi skippered by Janvier Gandara, has led the second leg of the Whitbread Round-The-World yacht race for 24 hours.

But in a lighter breeze yesterday she has been unable to exploit her ability to surf faster and. more often than her rivals, and Grant Dalton’s New Zealand ketch, Fisher and Paykel, was at midday only five miles astern.

The other Kiwi ketch, Peter Blake’s Steinlager 2, was 61 miles behind Fisher and Paykel, giving the two leaders a small cushion from attack, then came Merit (Pierre Fehlmann, Switzerland), Charles Jourdan (Alain Gabbay, France), Union Bank of Finland (Ludde Ingvall) and Rothmans (Lawrie Smith, Great Britain), all within 73 miles of Fortuna.

There is a spread of about 100 miles in latitude

between these seven yachts and even more between the other eight maxis in the fleet of 23. Fortuna has been making the news in more ways than one this week. As well as having lost and recovered a man overboard, one of her crew is nursing aa dislocated shoulder and another, Rafael Tibau, on

. Saturday, broke his leg in two places. Fortuna’s skipper contacted race headquarters in Portsmouth yesterday and suggested that it might be necessary for the injured man to be ferried ashore for attention;

This is permitted by the race rules, but it might not be possible to transfer the man to a ship or helicopter until the weather moderates and Fortuna gets nearer to Australia. At present she is still 1500 miles away. Tracy Edwards and her all-woman crew in the. British entry Maiden continue to set the pace among the smaller boats in division D.

Equity and Law 2, skippered by Dutchman Dirk Nauta, looks set to repeat her success on handicap of the first leg, in the combined divisions C and D, for she is already four days ahead of Maiden on corrected time.