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Half-time
01/11/09
Conditions have improved greatly this weekend and almost all of the fleet has sailed at an average of 10 knots en route for the Caribbean. Bad news for Friday's leaders. The Italians lost ground after their stay broke. At this rate, the first boats should reach Saint Bart's by next Saturday.
No explanations, just a short video from Giovanni Soldini and Pietro d’Ali (Telecom Italia) showing that the Italians have had to cope with the rupture of their forestay’s fixation. Fortunately, the mast did not come down and the crew managed to sort the problem out, particularly thanks to the fact that they are no longer sailing on the wind. A twenty knot south-easterly wind is allowing them to sail off the wind. This incident has cost the Italians the leadership position, but that was likely anyway, given that 150 miles further south, Tanguy de Lamotte and Adrien Hardy (Initiatives-Novedia) moved back into the lead on Saturday. The “gang of four” with Bruno Jourdren and Bernard Stamm (Cheminées Poujoulat) and Damien Seguin and Armel Tripon (Cargill-MTTM) are maintaining the same gaps, are sailing the same course and at the same speed, about eleven knots.
One single route
A low pressure system was expected to hit the fleet but ended up changing direction north, leaving the Class 40 in the high which has shifted south of the Azores. The whole fleet has similar conditions, east-south-east of around 15-25 knots, depending on the latitude. Only Lionel Regnier and Yves Ecarlat (Vale Inco-Nouvelle Calédonie) are struggling through unsteady winds close to the heart of the anticyclone. They have to put some south in their heading to free themselves from the grip of this system. For the others, northerners or southerners, downwind sailing is on the agenda and spinnakers for the most easterly placed. Good average speeds, sun, warmth, flying fish. Typical trade wind décor has at last arrived in the southern part of the North Atlantic.
Even Franc-Mexican team Patrice Carpentier and Victor Maldonado (Crédit Maritime) have managed to find some easterly wind up north off the Azores. This means that they are sailing fast down towards the Caribbean. Making good time like this, they might even meet some of the southern boats before the Caribbean. An exceptional comeback after having put into Portugal. Off Mauritania, Erik Nigon and Marc Jouany (Axa Atout Cœur pour Aides), David Consorte and Arnaud Aubry (Adriatech) and Brits Mike West and Paul Worswick (Keysource) are hardly one knot faster. It is unlikely that they will catch up with the main part of the fleet, Stephen Card and Shaun Murphy (Orbis) or Jacques Fournier and Jean-Edouard Criquioche (Groupe Picoty) are a hundred miles ahead !
Finally in the middle of the fleet, four non-French Class 40s are vying for attention. Tim Wright and Nicholas Brennan (Palanad 2) have managed to pull slightly ahead of their compatriots Peter Harding and Miranda Merron (40 Degrees) whereas the Finnish team of Jouni Romppanen and Sam Öhman (Tieto Passion) are no doubt regretting have gone off at an angle of 90° two days ago and Chileans Felipe Cubillos and Daniel Bravo Silva (Desafio Cabo de Hornos) their hesitant sailing the same day. Speeds across the fleet are close. Tactical options are making all the difference.
More of the same
The near perfect conditions after twelve days of head winds are almost certain to continue over to the Caribbean. The only element which might alter that is the gradual wind shift south-east to east and the strengthening trades. .It should influence the hierarchy but technically speaking, Sunday’s leaders should mark a slight advantage over the n ext couple of days. Thereafter, the situation should become a little more complex, as the trades should drop off a little on the approach to the Caribbean. If they turn south-east, that will favour the northerners, and if they turn north-east, that is good news for the southerners. Sailing fast is not enough. You have to go and be in the right place at the right time and the weather reports are not necessarily as clear as they might seem from terra firma.
