After Ericsson 4's leg one win this morning, the final stages of leg one of the Volvo Ocean race are being played out in the approach to Cape Town. The remaining seven boats in the fleet still to finish the leg continue to fight it out to the end, but it will be the black cat, PUMA (Ken Read / USA) who will be the next to finish in approximately three hours time. She has just 54 nm to go.

"This leg has been fantastic for us. It looks as though, barring any disasters, we will be second," said Ken Read today.

Meanwhile, 164 nm further back, the battle for third place between Ericsson 3 (Anders Lewander / SWE) and Green Dragon (Ian Walker / GBR) still wages.

"We are now moving OK, but still 10 per cent slow due to whatever damage is under the boat," says Ian Walker. "Without our collision, we would be comfortably holding on to third," he added.

Onboard Ericsson 3, everything is on edge. "We are still battling the Green Dragon and the situation feels close and stressful. Yesterday, we had a couple of bad sail changes. That was not good from our side, but today we have been purely unlucky. First, we had a rip in our A4. We had to take it down, repair it, and as soon as possible, hoist it again," explained MCM Gustav Morin.

Following the ripping of the spinnaker, the boat felt sluggish and the crew were mystified. After inspecting the keel, it became obvious that a big plastic bag had wrapped around it. The crew prepared to dive over the side into the freezing water to free it, but instead they successfully backed the boat up and the bag became free.

"The guys did a great job and everything went smoothly, but it is extremely frustrating that something like that happened now. As if it wasn't exciting and nerve-racking enough already," Morin said.

Telefónica Blue is currently playing her Stealth card, but reported suffering spectacular Chinese gybe last night. The boat was heeled at 57 degrees and although there were a few nervous moments, when the rig 'moaned and groaned' under the load, the crew were able to sort everything out and give the boat and rig a thorough check over. "We were back up to a modest pace in very little time," said navigator Simon Fisher, adding "lesson learnt and quite enough excitement for one night!"

Leg 1 Day 23 - 13:00 GMT Volvo Ocean Race Positions
(boat name / country / skipper / nationality / distance to leader)

Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael / BRA) FINISHED
PUMA Racing Team USA (Ken Read / USA) DTF 54
Ericsson 3 SWE (Anders Lewander / SWE) +164
Green Dragon IRL / CHN (Ian Walker / GBR) +202
Team Russia RUS (Andreas Hanakamp / AUT) +330
Delta Lloyd IRL (Ger O'Rourke / IRL) +458
Telefónica Black ESP (Fernando Echávarri / ESP) +515

Telefónica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) StealthPlay

Visit www.volvooceanrace.org for all the latest news!

The Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 will be the 10th running of this ocean marathon. Starting from Alicante in Spain, on 4 October 2008 with in-port racing, it will, for the first time, take in Cochin, India, Singapore and Qingdao, China before finishing in St Petersburg, Russia for the first time in the history of the race.

Spanning some 37,000 nautical miles, stopping at 11 ports and taking nine months to complete, the Volvo Ocean Race is the world's premier yacht race for professional racing crews.