BLACK SEAL TEAM EXTEND LEAD ON DAY THREE IN MARSEILLE

With nine races now completed in Marseille's SNIM Regatta Englishman Jamie Lea, helming for Richard Thompson, has established a comfortable 29 point lead ahead of Italy's Mario Zilliani.

With the wind now in the South and ranging from 8 to 18 knots it was another very testing day for the Melges 24 crews as they completed three more races.

Rob Smith, helming for Stuart Simpson, played a blinder in the first race of the day and led for the majority of the race to win comfortably. Unfortunately they could not repeat their performance in the subsequent races scoring 27 and 34.

Bruno Jourdran and the Pokemon team took the second race but again lacked consistency having come 26 in the morning and ten in race nine.

The best performance of the day came from Mario Zilliani with a three, four, one scoreline. Unfortunately for Zilliani, Jamie Lea also put in a very consistent performance and his four, three, three scoreline was more than enough to keep them in pole position now that the discard comes into play.

With a final two races scheduled for tomorrow Zilliani and the Ale Ali 3 crew will be hoping that luck is on their side if they are to have any chance of catching Lea.

Full results are available from www.lanautique.com.