Artemis TRANSAT - Class 40

Artemis Transat: Miranda Merron moves up rankings; still 2 miles from Boris Hermann

In the last 24 hours Miranda Merron’s ranking has shot up from 9th place to 5th, and the entire Class 40 fleet sticks to the same south-westerly heading with a northerly wind. Light winds over the next 48 hours will test the skippers’ patience and perhaps lead to some risky strategies and some of them inadvertently parking up. Miranda remains just 2 miles from Boris Hermann who has moved into 2nd on the leaderboard. She rang in yesterday to say that she was finding it mildly irksome having him so close!
A disturbing report from her today with signs that she is contemplating talking to imaginary friends (photo attached!) and that hallucination is already setting in. Having once admitted that she found it hard to treat eating and sleeping as an important part of her race routine, this race she was made to promise to look after herself as much as the boat. She has regularly let her shore team know how much sleep she has banked and how many meals she has eaten.
(06:55) “It has been a relatively uneventful 24 hours, grey sky, flat grey sea, wind dropping. Yesterday when I changed the spinnaker to gennaker, I discovered just how tired I was - it seemed to take far longer than normal. So I have now accumulated a few hours sleep. Much improved! The wind during the night was shifting 30 degrees at a time, and up and down in strength. I keep wondering if the other boats have more wind, or are they in similar conditions. We have an area of light winds to cross in the next couple of days, and this transition is important. There will be an element of luck involved as well, I think.”
“Alex (boat captain) has put her penguin, 'North', on board, thinking it would be better for me to talk to him than imaginary friends when hallucinating from exhaustion. North has been around the world and done a few transatlantics, so must have a huge number of sea miles. I will try to send a photo of him, since the view today is rather uninspiring.”
“Thanks to Steph, Kerry and Sacha, who have written a short story, to be read in instalments every 500 miles - I read the first page yesterday and giggled. I am looking forward to the next one!”
“Thank you very much to the following for the degrees for the past 24 hours: 17W Audierne Maritime - lovely to meet you last week! 18W Dubarry Shoes - the most comfortable sailing boots in the world (currently on 24 hours a day); 19W Champagne G. H. Mumm - which I am very much looking forward to drinking in a few weeks!! And learning how to do sabrage..! 20W Hamble River Sailing Club - I look forward to sailing there again when this is all over! 21W Point Source Thank you so much for your support.. Miranda/ 40 Degrees. 47 10 N, 22 08 W”
Thursday 15th May 2008
Time of Position : 0700 UK time
Latitude 47 13.53' N Longitude 22 01.10' W
Ranking : 5th
Average Speed : 9 knots
Distance To Leader : 34 nm
Distance To Boat Ahead : 2nm
Miles To Marblehead : 2,239.2
Sponsors Of The Day : 17W Audierne Maritime, 18W Dubarry Shoes, 19W Champagne G.H. Mumm, 20W Hamble River Sailing Club, 21W Point Source

Yesterday’s Sponsors Explained
Health Unlimited was established in 1984 by a group of British medical aid workers. The main aim of our work is to develop community-based health care services in remote and inaccessible areas of countries affected by war or political instability.
Most of our projects focus on women and children, who are particularly marginalised and underserved in rural areas, with an emphasis on immunisation, safe motherhood and prevention of major diseases including TB, malaria, HIV and AIDS. Today we work in 15 countries worldwide and reach over 3.2 million people through heath care projects and an estimated 26 million people in Africa and Cambodia through our health education radio programmes.
Knut Frostad, CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race, said: "The Volvo Ocean Race is very proud to support Miranda Merron, particularly as Miranda has been a past competitor in our event. We wish her the very best of luck with her current campaign and hope that one day we will have to chance to welcome her back into a future edition of our race." The 10th running of the Volvo starts on 4 October in Alicante, Spain and for the time in the history of the event, the route takes in ports in India, Singapore and China. It will finish in St Petersburg Russia after spanning some 37,000 nautical miles. It stops at around 11 ports, takes nine months to complete and is the world's premier ocean race for professional racing crews.