Not a blue Monday but very much a Blue Thursday for Bouwe Bekking and his crew – as Telefonica Blue sailed out of the the fog, licking at the wall of the Olympic harbour in Qingdao, to take first place in Leg 4.

The big red and black monster was the next to burst out of the gloom and surge across the line, PUMA and Ken Read just over an hour and a quarter behind in second. Torben Grael and Ericsson 4 then picked up six points for third to maintain their overall lead, leaving each of the top three just 3.5 points apart.

The human mind’s capacity to forget the bad and remember the good will be tested to the full in the next couple of days, as the crews step ashore and start the process of rest, recovery and rebuilding after their battering in the South China Sea. They have a little over a week before the in-port race in Qingdao.

But, if nothing else, those final miles were a lot easier than they might have been. Telefonica Blue hit a light spot 30 miles out, but then the new breeze seemed to roll in from the north-east with the fog. And all three boats had 10-12 knots to power them home, hours earlier than I expected.

We left the leading trio at 10:00 ZULU yesterday with PUMA having just passed Ericsson 4 – thanks to a fishing net.

It left the two boats virtually side by side – as Ken Read said at the dockside … “We were within three boat lengths at one point. It's unbelievable that after three storms on that race course the boats would be within 100 miles of each other, let alone 100 feet of each other.” But under those circumstances, it will be no surprise to anyone that battle commenced.

Check out the boat tracks in the Race Viewer, or see where PUMA’s (red) and Ericsson 4’s (white) tracks diverged from Telefonica Blue’s in this chart. They were sailing in about 15 knots of wind speed (TWS in the Data Graphs) with an easterly wind direction (TWD).

The only way to make a pass in this situation (assuming that one boat hasn’t got a net wrapped around its keel) is to go by to windward. And the defence against that attacking move is for the leading boat to sail at a tighter True Wind Angle (TWA), closer to the wind, so the attacking boat can’t get between you and where the wind is coming from – cutting off your power supply. The outcome of this is that both boats sail a narrower and narrower wind angle – which is why PUMA and Ericsson 4 head off to the east - until they either end up head-to-wind, the attacker gets by, or the defender shakes them off.

It took a while, and at least two further passes before the matter was settled – Ericsson 4 had second place back at the 13:00 Position Report, but lost it again at 16:00 ZULU. And that appears to be the decisive moment – PUMA then pulling out to what was a six-mile lead by the finish. But from the size of that final gap, and from early, unconfirmed chat on the dockside, it looks like another fishing net may well have intervened to settle the matter.

Meanwhile, the Dragon battles onwards. But Race Forecaster, Jennifer Lilly has better news for them this morning, in her latest analysis.  With Green Dragon’s position at 07:00 ZULU and the weather 24 hours later, the strongest breeze will stay to the east of them. They are still going to be sailing upwind all the way to the finish, but most of it will be on starboard tack, and the forecast has moderated again. The wind speeds (TWS) ought to be mostly under 20 knots between now and their arrival on the 30th January. So everyone who let off a firecracker to Ao-Kuang last night can give themselves a pat on the back …

And finally, as we await news from the engineers and teams that are planning the future for the three damaged boats, Michael Schultz wrote in and asked a question about the status of Ericsson 3 and Delta Lloyd. They have Suspended Racing, which means that they can accept outside assistance, but have to stop for a minimum of 12 hours, with no maximum time limit. So theoretically it’s still possible – until, or if, they formally retire from the leg as Telefonica Black has done – for one or both of them to fix the boat, put it back in the water and finish in Qingdao. So even after Green Dragon finishes, we might not be done with Leg 4 just yet… Watch this space.