Dalton plays the pressure game

Volvo Ocean Race: After his big gamble pays off, the leader has to keep a weather eye on rivals

What a difference a day makes. Last Sunday Grant Dalton's Amer Sports One rounded the island of Trindade in fifth place and 70 miles adrift of the leaders in this first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. Twenty-four hours later the boat was steaming through the fleet to take up the lead.

In what turned out to be a pack-shuffling period of massive proportions, only the previous leader, Illbruck, was able to maintain a semblance of consistency, dropping to second but avoiding more costly calamity.

That dramatic turn of events will have been as much of a surprise to Dalton – who was carefully playing himself and a late campaign in on this first leg and who had been suffering from irritating gear damage that prevented him capitalising on the strengths of his boat's design during the previous week – as it would have been an unwelcome shock to the boats that were previously up front.

The turning point of this leg was the moment that the fleet opened out from the no-passing-lane straits that had marked the previous week and a half south through the doldrums, across the Equator and past the two mandatory island marks, the latter of which was Trindade.

As they left Trindade the fleet splayed through more than 90 degrees as they approached a huge and blocking South Atlantic high-pressure system and tried to deduce and anticipate its movements to devise the fastest path through.

This phase of the race was littered with irony: four years ago, Dalton was passed by Paul Cayard and Mark Rudiger in EF Language as they dived south, found the breeze and sailed terminally away from him. This time Rudiger, navigator aboard Assa Abloy, who were in second place at the time, went north to try and sail around the top of the high pressure. Assa was parked for two days while Dalton steamed through the middle and into the lead.

And so the last four or five days have seen the fleet now split from two groups to three. Still beleaguered at the back are djuice Dragons, Amer Sports Too and SEB, who continue to lose miles by the hour.

In the middle are Tyco and Assa Abloy, with Rudiger streaming into line behind the leaders and cutting off the back three in a damage-limitation exercise. And up front are Amer Sports One, Illbruck and News Corp with less than 100 miles between them and few short-term options to make a decisive move.

But although this leg is four weeks old today and fewer than 1,500 miles remain, this race is far from run. Just as the high-pressure system that blocked the fleet at the beginning of last week threw up a multitude of possible options and a reshuffle at the front, the first few days of this week promise to be very similar: a cell of light-wind high pressure is sitting between the fleet and Cape Town, and while the leaders are steaming straight towards it at fast and steady speeds, it is difficult to predict how the high pressure will behave.

It is forecast to move away to the east but predicting if, when, how fast it will do so and indeed if it will move at all, will be taxing the navigational brains.

And the irony now is that whereas a week ago, when Dalton had nothing to lose, he was able to weave his way to the front based purely on his own interpretation of the fastest course, right now he will be playing the game the tactical teams of Illbruck, Assa Abloy and the others were playing. That is temper-ing the temptation of the Amer Sports One interpretation of the fastest course with regular six-hourly looks over both shoulders for signs of a profiteering break in the ranks. The leaders are expected to arrive in Cape Town on Thursday.