Yachting: Camper narrows gap on Puma

CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand during leg 6 of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12, from Itajai, Brazil, to Miami, USA. Photo / Hamish Hooper/CAMPER ETNZ/Volvo Ocean Race.

Camper has narrowed the gap on Volvo Ocean Race leg six leader Puma overnight, while seeing off a challenge from Telefonica for second place.

Puma is now less than five nautical miles ahead of Camper, with Telefonica a further 10 nautical miles behind the Team NZ boat.

With the fleet having rounded Recife on the north eastern corner of Brazil, the teams now have a 3000 nautical mile downwind drag race through the Caribbean Sea ahead of them. The finish line is at Miami.

Overnight Camper has also managed to get further east and offshore of the majority of the fleet which the team has been attempting to do for several days in order to make the most of the building south east trade winds.

Camper skipper Chris Nicholson said spirits were high on board.

"We know that we're very competitive in running conditions and there's plenty of that coming up. There's really nothing in at the moment between us and Puma so if we can just continue chipping away at their lead as we have been we will be in good shape.

"I think we are very competitive - this is a course that so far could have been extremely difficult for us with regards to a lot of jib reaching and it hasn't been the case so far.

"It's going to be a very tight race and personally I don't think that from here we're going to see vast differences in the boats, so we'll probably see these first three boats stick closely with each other all the way to Miami."