By JULIE ASH
Kevin Shoebridge's Tyco leads the fleet in the early stages of the second leg of the round-the-world race.
The fleet set sail from Cape Town yesterday in a fresh 15 to 20-knot southeasterly breeze.
Last night, Tyco had a narrow lead over djuice, Newscorp and Grant Dalton's Amer Sports
One.
SEB followed in fifth place, ahead of the all-female Amer Sports Too, Assa Abloy and leg one winners illbruck.
Tyco finished fourth in the first leg and Auckland's Shoebridge said his crew were going all out for a top-three finish in the second leg.
"We have done a lot of preparation for this leg and we're going to do the best we can do for a top-three result," he said.
"The shore crew has done an excellent job of servicing the boat and we are 100 per cent ready. The guys are just itching to get going in this leg."
Illbruck suffered a minor setback when the crew discovered they were taking on board water in the bow section of the yacht.
They briefly bore off course to ease the flow of waves crashing over the yacht while the problem was assessed.
The bow inspection hatch was revealed to be the problem and was promptly secured. The bow section was pumped out and the yacht pointed back on course.
Dalton's Amer Sports One had a brief stint in first place, but slipped to seventh after they had to change direction to avoid illbruck.
That started a bad run for Dalton as he was then forced to bear away again to avoid hitting a large spectator boat, costing him 300m.
A protest flag has been flown and the exact nature of the incident will be known soon.
The yachts are likely to dip to about 52 degrees south to round Kerguelen Island before heading north to round the compulsory waypoint at Eclipse Island off the coast of south- western Australia.
Once they pass Kerguelen Island they will hit an area with the strongest consistent winds in the world.
The fleet is expected in Sydney about December 4.
