AFTER four days, Team Tyco's reign at the front of the Volvo Ocean Race fleet ended as illbruck's bold move to the east paid handsome dividends.

Stu Bettany reported from illbruck and said: "The moves we made to break from the four other boats at the front of the pack (Tyco, ASSA ABLOY, Amer Sports One and Team News Corp) and head east is slowly paying off."

For the first time in ocean racing, the crews have permanent access to the Internet.

Even though limited to ten public sites, the impact on routing a round-the-world yacht is massive.

Nick White, co-navigator on News Corp explained: "The Internet experience from a tactical point of view is proving to be a revelation.

"In many ways, it has made my job easier. I can go online when I want and get almost what I want instead of having to rely on ever-diminishing radio fax transmissions.

"Because of this, I get a lot more time to sleep."

In light wind conditions every extra knot of wind speed makes a huge difference in the performance of a sailing yacht, more than any other factor. Pressure on the navigator is immense.

They are analysing weather information from various sources, plotting theirs and the other boats' courses, and, most importantly, compare different routing options for the following hours and days.

Especially when there are few changes in the wind patterns, it is down to picking up marginal changes

In other areas, even experienced sailors rely on their gut feeling. Guillermo Altadil has put some extra food on board ASSA ABLOY, because he felt, this time the trip could last longer than expected.

Aside from the battle for the lead at present, the crews of djuice and SEB report good spirits despite their lowly positions.

With just over 2,000 miles under their keels and over 5,000 miles to Cape Town at the end of the first leg, neither is prepared to give up the fight.

"Never in my life has my patience been tested harder," reflected djuice skipper Knut Frostad.

"A small loss during the first days out of Southampton has grown to a massive distance, even if we have been fighting like hell, day and night and most likely made very few mistakes the last days. But don't you ever think that we have accepted the loss".

This time it was the girls on Amer Sports Too delivering the best 24-hour performance with a total of 220 miles, closely followed by djuice's 218.

Team SEB in the east has slowed down and even made another move to the east in their search for the best approach to the doldrums.