Sailing: Dalton bides his time as light winds bring frustration

In painfully slow conditions, the leaders in the Volvo Ocean Race were ticking off the final miles of the fourth leg from Auckland to Rio de Janeiro last night.

Still holding a nerve-calming cushion of 25 miles was John Kostecki, lining up illbruck for their third leg win. But even he was making little more than five or six knots and behind him there was little to separate the chasing pack of four.

In second place was Grant Dalton, whose decision nearly a week ago to put Amer Sports One to the east of the fleet could still pay big dividends. The forecast was that a new breeze would develop from the east and his crew were praying it would both become a reality and benefit them first.

In sight of each other, in third and fourth place, were Neal McDonald in Assa Abloy and Kevin Shoebridge in Tyco, both with six more miles to travel through the heat of a tropical night.

"It's amazing how, after 7,000 miles, here we are stacked up in a row," said the Assa navigator Mark Rudiger. "Now we have to survive another endurance test: to try to stay focused and active in increasing heat and light, frustrating wind." He, too, was musing over whether their more westerly position would win out over the east, whether the land-induced sea breeze stretches far enough out to pick them up and carry them home before the new weather system wind.

Many of the crew who were nursing injuries such as chilblains and cracked skin, which developed during the icy charge through the southern ocean to Cape Horn, are now seeing them become worse in the humidity and heat of the run in to Brazil. Still with hundreds of miles to run are News Corp, who managed to continue racing after their rudder broke off, and the all-woman crew of Amer Sports Too. The dismasted SEB is being shipped from Punta Arenas to Rio, where a new mast awaits.

VOLVO OCEAN RACE: Fourth leg positions with miles to the finish: 1 illbruck (J Kostecki) 65; 2 Amer Sports One (G Dalton) 90; 3= Assa Abloy (N McDonald), Tyco (K Shoebridge) 96; 5 djuice (K Frostad) 98; 6 News Corp (J Fanstone) 394; 7 Amer Sports Too (L McDonald) 600; 8 SEB (G Krantz) retired.