Emirates Team New Zealand Media Update

Heading South As The Fleet Converges

6 March 2012

CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand is fast approaching the wind shadow of New Caledonia on Day 16 of Leg Four as the fleet begins to converge on each other after the split of the past week.

This morning as the fleet set-up to round the island of New Caledonia CAMPER along with Telefonica tacked and headed east while Groupama and Puma tried to translate their easterly separation into genuine distance ahead.

Earlier, CAMPER had slipped past Abu Dhabi and into fourth place as both Abu Dhabi and Sanya struggled at the tail end of the fleet in light winds dropping to under 10 knots.

As the boats prepare to round the 300 mile long land mass of New Caledonia to the west its large wind shadow is causing concern and will likely cause the fleet to push south before making the left turn for New Zealand says CAMPER skipper Chris Nicholson.

“The land shadow will be big. It’s amazing the effect these mountains have on the breeze in this part of the world. We went under an island yesterday and we were 60 miles away and we felt the wind shadow from that very hard on us. So we will be careful of that and continue on our journey south.

Nicholson also believes that the complex and unstable weather situation developing for the final stage of the leg from New Caledonia to Auckland means that anything could happen and opportunities may open up.

“There’s opportunities here I think for every team at the moment -- and that ranges between a first or a last in this leg. Certainly nothing can be taken for granted at the moment.
“A lot of the weather models we’ve got are not agreeing with each other at the moment, but one thing they models do say is there’s going to be compression of the fleet in light airs, near North Cape.
“There are opportunities out there still and we certainly haven’t given up fighting.”
CAMPER in the latest position report at 1500h 6 March NZT is averaging 14.5 knots in a 13 knot easterly. They are 1411 nautical miles from Auckland and the latest estimated time of arrival is between mid-morning and mid-afternoon on Sunday 11th March.

Pictures of CAMPER, video footage and audio files are available upon request. Further information and race updates will be available on www.etnzblog.com

The latest video from on board CAMPER is here

The latest audio from on board CAMPER is here

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ENDS

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