Fernando's Echavarri's Telefonica Black, which burst out of the starting blocks on Saturday afternoon, will sail the leg into Boston one man short.

Bowman Michael Pammenter has injured his foot, and was taken back to the Marina da Gloria by a support boat. Under the race rules, the team cannot replace him during this leg. Upon arrival at the marina, Pammenter was transferred to hospital to have his leg and foot examined.

"I had the jib sheet wrapped around my foot when we went into a tack and I got flipped into the rig," he said, describing how it occured. "I got my foot stuck between the mast and the jib sheet basically. It's really painful but I've had some painkillers so it's calmed down a lot, but there's a lot of swelling so we thought it would be safer if I got off the boat and got it checked out properly. Hopefully I'll be back for the next leg.

"Originally I was going to try and carry on, do as little as possible, but the realisation came that if I want it to heal properly I have to get off and get it done properly. There is minimal chance that I have broken anything, but just be safe.

"I am really upset," he continued. "I just feel pretty stupid to be honest. We are all really excited to leave and then I do something like this. But it happens."

Meanwhile, on the race course, at the 22:00 position report, PUMA and Telefonica Black were in a close battle for top spot. But Telefonica Blue, Ericsson 4 and Green Dragon were all within a mile of the lead - it's still very early to have a clear leader.

Wind speeds are down in the 7-knot region and as darkness falls on Rio, the sea breeze from this afternoon is certain to die out.

Rick Deppe, the media man on PUMA, was the first to send in a report this evening. He describes how hard it was to say goodbye to Rio, the start, and notes that currently, his team is "sailing east at a slow speed in close company with the whole fleet."

He says his team is expecting a slow start to the leg. Earlier, on the dock, one of the crew could be heard joking they may still be in sight from the beach when the sun comes up on Sunday morning.

So it's a quiet start to leg six, with the light air chess game expected to continue through the rest of the Easter weekend. The forecast improves next week.