Yachting: ABN Amro One skipper will 'let it rip'

With an unassailable lead in the round-the-world race, ABN Amro One skipper Mike Sanderson has vowed to "let her rip" in the final two legs but the weather might have other ideas.

The fleet set sail from Portsmouth this morning in the penultimate leg of the round-the-world race to Rotterdam, Holland.

The 1500-nautical-mile journey takes the fleet around Britain and Ireland then loops back to Rotterdam.

Leaving Portsmouth, they head out through the western end of the Solent and into the English Channel, en route for Lands End, the Scillies and the Fastnet rock, off the coast of Ireland.

From the Fastnet, the boats turn the southwest corner of Ireland and head for the rock that is St Kilda before heading south down the North Sea.

The last part of the journey is a minefield of oil and gas rigs and, with Rotterdam the busiest port in Europe, teams will have to negotiate their way across some of the most congested shipping lanes in the world.

The forecast is for no wind, at least until the boats get to the Fastnet Rock.

At yesterday's skippers press conference, Sanderson said this about the weather:

"Stan [Honey, navigator] tells me it will be light up to the Fastnet. We will be relying on thermal winds and the night time drains off the shore.

"There's not much gradient wind so we will be relying on sunny England to generate thermals," he joked.

Sanderson said Honey had confidently predicted ABN Amro One-type weather after the Fastnet Rock, much to the disappointment of the five other teams, who have shown they cannot match the speed ABN Amro One in heavier conditions.

The seventh leg is an awkward length for the crews. At five or six days, and perhaps less, it will be too short for watch arrangements to be used to give the crews a full rest cycle.

Missing from today's start was Spanish entry movistar, who are still trying to locate their yacht which sank off the English coast on the last leg.

Two attempts have failed to find the yacht and a third is now dependant on the willingness of the team's insurers to fund another search over the 2330 square kilometres of ocean where the boat is expected to be.

However, with the boat's exact status still unknown, hope is fading that they will ever find movistar and discover why it sank.

Overall Points

ABN Amro One (Ned) 84.5
Pirates of Caribbean (US) 59.5
Brasil 1 (Brazil) 52.0
ABN Amro Two (Ned) 48.5
movistar (Spain) 48.0
Ericsson (Swe) 45.0
Brunel (Aus) 8.0