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© Christophe Breschi/MARE.DE
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Joerg Riechers sitting comfortably on Cinnamon Girl, a rare occurence at sea.
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As the Class 40 fleet enters its third week at sea in the 2010 edition of the Route du Rhum, German sailor Joerg Riechers on the Owen Clarke designed Class 40 mare.de has been placed third on consecutive polls this morning. In his blog Riechers sounds upbeat and on good form, readying himself for the final week and banking some sleep in the last twenty four hours. In first place, Mini Transat winner Thomas Ruyant is 100 miles ahead while second place double Figaro Solo winner Nicolas Troussel lies forty miles behind the leader. Well to the north of mare.de, but only ten miles behind in terms of distance to finish are fourth and fifth place Sam Manuard and Yvan Noblet. With eight hundred miles of tactical and occasionally uncharacteristically light air sailing to go, the leaders should be finishing sometime around the weekend. Riechers has proved to be as he promised the dark horse of this event and will be looking for a place on the podium and to improve on the third place position achieved by Ian Munslow on his Owen Clarke designed Bolands Mill in the last edition of the race. Meanwhile, New Zealander Conrad Colman on 40 Degrees who was placed seventh towards the end of week two has fallen steadily through the ranking after the unfortunate loss of his Code 0 and A2 spinnaker, his two most effective off-wind sails in the light to medium wind range.
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