Sailing: Golding goes with Channel flow to keep tabs on leader

In a game of snakes and ladders going west down the Channel in light conditions, Britain's Mike Golding pulled up to second place yesterday in the Open 60 class going into the second 24 hours of the two-handed Transat Jacques Vabre race from Le Havre to Bahia de Salvador, Brazil.

Among the 17 in the class, he was just half a mile behind Kito de Pavant and Sébastien Col, making his first trip across the Atlantic in anything other than a jet, in their bright red Groupe Bel.

But Golding, along with with his sailmaker crew Bruno Dubois, was only a tenth of a mile ahead of the next two and it will only need one of the top 10 to pick up a little extra private breeze or judge a tide better to shuffle the pack again.

Completing the top 10 were Samantha Davies, with Jeanne Gregoire in Roxy, and Dee Caffari, co-skippered by Nigel King in Aviva, while another British pairing of Jonny Malbon and Gringo Tourell had always been in touch with a much modified Artemis. In the morning, Caffari reported: "We are floating past the Channel Islands and meeting an adverse tide."

Jo Royle, in another Anglo-French partnership with Alexia Barrière, had taken their 40-foot class Pindar to the front at one stage, but then slipped to sixth as Bruno Jourdren and Nicolas Pichelin took over in the lead.

Yesterday, without the delays caused by Saturday's blockade by French fishermen, saw the start of the multihulls, with Franck Cammas and Steve Ravussin leading the way in Groupama and making speeds three times that of the average six knots being recorded by the Open 60s.

The benign conditions may continue as far south as the Canary Islands, leaving tricky tactical decisions about when to head west.