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At 14:00 BST the vast majority of the fleet were in the remotest corner of the North Sea, hundreds of miles from any city and well offshore. The barren coastline of northeast Scotland was the nearest landfall. In essence, they were very much out on their own.

Race leader Groupama had managed to struggle past the light winds around the Isle of Lewis and into fresher north easterly breeze. Getting to the breeze first means that they have opened up an 18 mile lead on rivals Telefónica Azul.

Groupama have taken pole position in the race to be the first boat to finish in the Sevenstar Round Britain and Ireland Race and overtaken Telefonica Azul as they approach Muckle Flugga, the most northern point of Great Britain. Yesterday afternoon the wind softened and headed the two Volvo 70’s and Groupama  took a hitch to the West which initially seemed like wasted miles but has proved decisive over the last 8 hours with more breeze to the West. Yann Riou on board Groupama explains:
"Yesterday we decided to go further inshore and we went onto starboard tack for about an hour and it looks like it was a good move and Team Groupama are delighted to hear that we are now ahead of our rivals. It was a tough night and it has been a hard race. Especially as we have had many sail changes, so we have had very little sleep but the crew are all in good spirits.

14-year-old Dutch sailor, Laura Dekker, departed in secrecy from Portugal on Saturday on her quest to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world, avoiding the media because her manager said she didn't want the attention.

Laura Dekker said goodbye to her father and friends at an undisclosed Portuguese port en route to Spain's Canary Islands or Portugal's Madeira Island despite almost windless conditions in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal, according to manager Peter Klarenbeek.

On the White Group start line the Laser SB3 class got away cleanly after a 10-minute postponement. The adverse tide favoured the inner end of the line, but in light wind there were big holes close inshore. 10 minutes later it was very soft for the Longtze class, with only one boat on the line and the back-markers were barely clear a couple of minutes before the scheduled Etchells start time.

This year's first start saw the nine Extreme 40s competing in the Extreme Sailing Series at Cowes on the Royal Yacht Squadron line for their first long-distance race. In light airs, with insufficient wind for these high-adrenaline machines to fly a hull, and a building flood tide, the fleet lined up heading inshore on starboard tack 20 seconds before the gun. However, three were over the line early and the inshore boat had to tack for depth almost immediately after the gun, forcing the remainder of the fleet to tack offshore.

Jaguar has announced a partnership with TEAMORIGIN –‘TEAMORIGIN racing with Jaguar’.

TEAMORIGIN, the British America’s Cup sailing team, created by Sir Keith Mills with the single purpose of winning the America’s Cup for Great Britain is joined by Jaguar for a summer of sailing activities. The first event that will see ‘TEAMORIGIN racing with Jaguar’ is during Cowes Week this August, when they will face BMW ORACLE Racing (the current holder of the America’s Cup) in the 1851 Cup event.

A boat made out of 12 500 recycled plastic bottles sailed into Sydney Harbour on Monday, four months after it set out from San Francisco on a journey across the Pacific Ocean meant to raise awareness about the perils of plastic waste.

The crew of the Plastiki, a 18.2 metre catamaran that weathered fierce ocean storms during its 8 000 nautical miles at sea, left San Francisco on March 20, stopping along the way at various South Pacific island nations including Kiribati and Samoa.

A breaching whale has crash-landed on a sailboat in Table Bay, narrowly missing the vessel's occupants and leaving in its wake bits of blubber and thick skin.

This picture shows the southern right whale seconds before its massive body landed on the coach roof of the boat, flattening the steel mast and bringing down the rigging before sliding back into the water and disappearing into the distance.

The penultimate race of the Clipper 09-10 Round the World Yacht Race is underway. At 1700 local time (1600 GMT) on Friday, the cannon fired from the Royal Cork Yacht Club’s start line at Weaver’s Point near Crosshaven at the mouth of Cork Harbour to set the teams on their way in the 550-mile race to Ijmuiden, Holland.