Wind speed reduces - will JAMAICA's tactics pay off?

At 06:00 this morning JAMAICA posted the second fastest speed of the whole fleet, continuing their great progress having posted the fastest time at 18:00 yesterday evening.

As reported yesterday JAMAICA has decided to take a more westerly position in search of stronger winds and at a time when the winds have reduced dramatically, this tactic appears to have paid off.

As the race viewer above shows, JAMAICA has followed Liverpool's example and sailed to the West. It means that currently both Liverpool (10th) and JAMAICA (9th) have the furthest distance to finish of the whole fleet but as the winds continue to drop their positionswill give them more options both in terms of winds and sailing angles than those clippers hugging the shoreline.

The graphic below illustrates this point : to the left of the picture we can see the relative positions of the fleet. As they continue to sail south they will at some point have to gybe to port (that's "turn left" to you and me) so as to continue south east down the western coast of the United States, before arriving in Panama, which can be seen in the bottom left of the picture.

There's still a long way to go but the crew can be satisfied with both their performance and their tactics thus far.