Steven David's Wild Joe is now narrowly leading the Audi Sydney Gold Coast fleet and is due to finish this afternoon around 5pm, just outside record time.

This leadership change on Yacht Tracker  backs up a phone report at 11.30am this morning from Matt Allen, the owner/skipper of Ichi Ban , who had just watched Bob Oatley's Wild Oats X slip past them and figured that Wild Joe was probably leading both larger yachts at that stage.

“There is only a quarter of a mile between the three of us,” said Allen. “This makes the chase for line honours very exciting…..there is still a long way to go.”

With 72 nautical miles to the finish, all three are within sight of each other with Wild Joe furthest out to sea, a winning tactical decision by David and his top crew which includes round the world yachtsman Anthony Merrington and America 's Cup sailor Adam Beashel as skipper.

The three leading boats are maintaining similar boat speeds although Ichi Ban and Wild Oats X are currently sailing 1 knot faster than Wild Joe .

On board money man Paul Clitheroe's Balance , he's written a note to remind himself never to go wide again.

Yesterday afternoon Clitheroe was in the company of the now provisional IRC handicap leader Splash Gordon but made the fateful mistake of heading out to sea only to find they'd dropped back 30 places by morning.

“There was a tonne of breeze offshore but also a lot of current, which we didn't expect. When the breeze swung more to the west during the night, those close in only had to turn their nose to sea to capitalise,” said Clitheroe this afternoon.

He's still happy he has a ‘bar story' for when he arrives at Southport Yacht Club. Hitting 22 knots of boat speed is a record for this Sydney 47 and not bad going for a cruiser/racer. “The big boats would have been bored but for us it was a hoot!” Clitheroe laughed.

Each competing yacht has been fitted with a tracking device and can be monitored constantly via Yacht Tracker on the official race web sites http://goldcoast.cyca.com.au and http://mackay.cyca.com.au