Troubles for Mike Birch in The Transat

News came in this afternoon that 72-year-old Canadian skipper, Mike Birch, had lost his autopilot system completely onboard his 50ft multihull Nootka. He started The Transat with only one autopilot working and his hopes that it would last the duration of the 2800 mile course, have just been dashed. Birch, who is competing in The Transat for the sixth time, will speak with his engineer tonight to see if it is possible to find a solution to the problem which he thinks is mechanical and not electrical.

Anne Liardet, only one of two women competing in the Open 60 class, on Quicksilver Edition has a broken boom but has decided to continue with the race. The breakage occured on Tuesday morning but Liardet is determined to finish to complete her race qualification for the Vendée Globe.

At the front of the Open 60 monohull fleet, Mike Golding (Ecover) still holds a 35+ mile lead over Temenos (Dominic Wavre) although the front runners are averaging slower speeds and the NW winds lighten to around 10-15 knots. Pindar AlphaGraphics (Mike Sanderson) is hanging on to third place just 4 miles behind Temenos and with around 350 miles to go to the finish in Boston - it is still very much an open contest. The leading pack are now crossing the shallower waters of the continental shelf within a few miles of each other.

Behind the front pack, Nick Moloney (Skandia) continues to increase his lead over Conrad Humphreys (Hellomoto) who is positioned at 41 40N compared to Skandia at 43 15N. "I just hope Conrad is worrying about the guys behind and not worrying about how to catch me," said Moloney today. Humphreys took a southerly option to cross the high pressure as he anticipated it would move north. Unfortunately, this was not the case and Humphreys was becalmed for 8 hours during the night.

The Grand Banks and Flemish Cap sea areas are currently dotted with Transat boats from the all classes heading north on port tack in SW breeze. As the wind turns NW later today, these boats are likely to tack and reach south with a possible advantage over the southerly boats.

Furthest north is 50ft monohull, Okami (Jacques Bouchacourt) 80 miles due east of Cape St Francis, Newfoundland. Bouchacourt has just moved into second place ahead of Joe Harris on Wells Fargo-American Pioneer who also took the southerly option to pass the high pressure. Slightly east of Okami, a similar tactic has been taken by Norbert Sedlacek on 60ft monohull, Austria One, while Sebastien Josse is within 6 miles of Newfoundland's Cape St Mary.

Leading 50ft monohull, Artforms (Kip Stone), is positioned in the centre of the Grand Banks to the north of GiFi (Dominique Demachy) and Great American II (Rich Wilson) currently second and third in the 50ft multihull class behind Trilogic (Eric Bruneel) who is now committed to a more southern option and is currently on the same latitude as the finish line.

French skipper, Yves Parlier, on his new catamaran Médiatis Region Aquitaine reported in an interview this afternoon that he had not been able to cook one meal since the start. He explained that even heating water in a kettle was impossible as the boat was shaking around so much and it was impossible for the kettle to stay in one place long enough to get hot! Parlier also compared his catamaran to a Formula 1 car, saying it was only built for one type of race track and not an off-road Paris-Dakar rally like The Transat.

Within all The Transat 2004 classes, tactics and weather will be crucial over the next 48 hours and may alter the leaderboards substantially right through to the end.

Positions:

For latest positions go to www.thetransat.com and click on the 'Latest Race Data/Latest Positions' on the orange bar and then click on leaderboard. Positions are available daily every 2 hours from 0600BST-1800BST.