In less time than it takes to boost a Shelby Mustang GT 500, Telefonica Blue snatched the prize from PUMA – thirty seconds separated the boats at the Leg 7 scoring gate. Another precious half point in the battle for second overall for Bouwe Bekking, and another nearly-but-not-quite-top-step podium place for Ken Read and his men.

The drama played out in the darkness of the frozen north, as the pair battled side by side for the final hours. Ericsson 4 had edged to the south a little, and followed them across 20 minutes later. Ericsson 3 was another 30 minutes behind, holding the same advantage over Telefonica Black in fifth. Delta Lloyd crossed the line sixth, while Green Dragon was ignoring the gate for the sake of the next battle – but will pick up points for seventh at some stage.

Driving hard and fast for the line of longitude 52 degrees 38 minutes west, the leading pair crossed the gate just a mile from its intersection with the ice exclusion zone. And as soon as they were across the line, the two crews started frantically restacking the sails and gear so they could tack to port and escape a foul. Only once they were headed south, did the cost of the dash for cash become clear. First Ericsson 4 crossed clean in front, then Telefonica Black, then Delta Lloyd and finally ... PUMA and Telefonica Blue did just scrape ahead of Green Dragon, but not by much.

At 10:00 ZULU the fleet was racing for the south-west corner of the ice exclusion zone. The wind speed was in the mid-teens and blowing from the south-east, which made the corner of the ice box a little less than 100 miles away and almost dead upwind. Telefonica Black had the lead, with the rest of the fleet tucked away nicely to the west and north of her.

Roger Nilson wrote from Telefonica Black this morning, "We decided yesterday not to focus on the scoring gate, instead focus on the south-west corner of the ice box. If the wind direction does not change too much, it is a possibility that the four leading boats to the north could be behind us after we are forced to tack ..."

Everyone is now faced with a 100 mile upwind slog to the corner of the ice box in some tough conditions.

The next 24 hours is going to be all about threading their way through the shifting breeze and swirling currents to get round the ice exclusion zone. The high pressure (now centred just north of the north-east corner of the ice box) that has been dominating the weather for the past couple of days is still forecast to slide south. The effect of that should be to rotate the wind from the south-east, back to the south. And that ought to benefit boats to the south-west, over boats to the north-east – which is probably why everyone is now on port tack, headed south.

Once they get to the south-west corner, it will be a reach along the southern edge of the ice exclusion zone, which is where we will find them tomorrow morning. We can see from today’s Predicted Route image showing the boat positions and weather in three days time that it will get more complicated once they clear the south-east corner of the ice box.

It will be a race downwind to get north around the edge of the high pressure to pick up that big low pressure system that you can see whisking them to Galway in the top right-hand corner of the image. So we have a bit of everything coming up – medium air upwind and reaching round the ice box, then a steadily increasing breeze to take them home downwind. Team Telefonica should shine in the first part, but can they build a big enough lead to hold off the Ericsson boats once they start blasting downwind?

Either way, as PUMA’s Shannon Falcone pointed out in his interview with Rick Deppe yesterday, it’s going to be over quick. We know this, because there’re only four bags of food to move around when they stack the boat.