The Around Alone Race got off to a spectacular start in New York Harbour yesterday with the 13 boat fleet getting away cleanly on their first leg to Torbay, England.

The start was a fairly uneventful affair although the fleet did find themselves shrouded by fog shortly after the start though luckily this was after they had cleared most of the difficult navigational hazards on their way out of the harbour.

The race web site is so far not up to the standard set by the Volvo Ocean Race earlier this year and I am finding it a little difficult to extract good information from the site. The race viewer does not seem to be working at this stage and the fleet positions on the home page do not quite stack up with the distances to sail on the position chart. Hopefully this will improve today making it easier to follow the progress of the race. To see for yourself visit the race web site at www.aroundalone.com.

In the meantime the fleet standing, as I interpret it, is as follows as of 10 pm eastern standard time in the USA last night:

Yacht	Skipper	Miles To Finish
Hexagon	Graham Dalton	2858
Bobst Group Amor Lux	Bernard Stamm	2860
Ocean Planet	Bruce Schwab	2879
Solidaires	Thierry Dubois	2880
Tiscali	Simone Bianchetti	2882
Garnier	Patrick De Radigues	2885
Pindar	Emma Richards	2889
Bayer Ascensia	John Dennis	2904
Spirit of Canada	Derek Hatfield	2912
BTC Velocity	Alan Paris	2914
Everest Horizontal	Tim Kent	2914
Spirit of Yukoh	Kojiro Shiraishi	No Position Available
Tommy Hilfiger	Brad Van Lieuw	No Position Available