Michel Desjoyeaux (Foncia) confirmed this morning that has was saling in a 20-knot easterly and that the sea is remaining very rough, but that he will be hoisting the gennaker as the winds ease off on Sunday evening.
It is not clear how much time he will lose in imminent passage round the worst effects of the Azores High pressures system. Meantime, in second, it is the turn of Roland Jourdain on Veolia Environnement to profit from the same conditions Desjoyeaux sped away from him in two days ago – strong NE’ly winds with squalls in excess of 30 knots.
However Jourdain is unlikely to make real inroads
The Azores high is exerting its influence generating NE’ly trade winds between the latitude of Cape Verde and the Canaries blowing at around5 knots, sending some squally conditions. Although the system is tending to move gradually towards Europe, it is particularly in the north that things are changing, as the system is being flattened, compresses north south by a series of low-pressure areas crossing from Newfoundland towards Ireland.
The Azores high is therefore becoming shaped like a bean and stretching out all the way from the Caribbean to the Canaries. So Michel Desjoyeaux (Foncia) has no other solution but to try go round to the west and find the optimum route, avoiding the worst of the sticky light winds nearer the centre. Making NNW he is sailing with the wind on the beam on a course of 355° and is expecting the breeze to drop progressively.
The South Atlantic continues to be something of a poker game. The St Helena high has moved off east towards Namibia allowing hot air to bubble up and move away from the Brazilian coast. This is leading to a mass of cloud and is shutting off the SE’ly trade winds, which are light and unstable.
In fifth place Sam Davies, GBR, (Roxy) should slip away in time to keep her distance from the advances of Brian Thompson who is the quickest in the fleet. Thompson is making 16 knots on the powerful Juan K design which is now much more in its optimum conditions, fast reaching. Thompson is 272 miles behind Roxy although the Cowes based Thompson reckoned this morning that he would have no more than six or seven hours of speedy sailing before he too would inevitably fall into the clutches of what he calls the ‘Rio Doldrums’ – the confused area of high pressure ridges and squally low pressure systems which have proved so difficult for Davies and eighth placed Arnaud Boissières who has lost more than 400 miles in the last few days.
Rich Wilson, USA, (Great American III) has 437 miles to go to Cape Horn and this afternoon was making over 11 knots in brisk NW’ly winds which should carry him to the Atlantic.
Sam Davies, GBR, (ROXY): “After six days of going really slowly in kind of Doldrums conditions we are going better now in the right direction and actually making ten knots, and so we are hoping that when we get to the Doldrums we will get favourable conditions because we have already done it. I am OK now because we are moving now at more than ten knots, but yesterday was pretty hard to be stopped, again for the whole day.”
“I think I was a little bit unlucky in this situation but there you go, that is offshore racing and that is why we do it and why we love it.”
“I would never have done it (what Guillemot did, going close to the Brasil coast). I think you can get more stuck there, stuck for days, on the coast there, whereas in fact I got stuck for days offshore. But, well done to him. It was a good strategy to try but I don’t think he had much choice.”
Brian Thomspon, GBR, (Bahrain Team Pindar), “The next six hours should be gains against Sam more, while we are in strong reaching conditions, but then we have the Rio Doldrums, she’ll get away again a little bit but by tomorrow morning we should be into the SE tradewinds and so it is looking good for the boat. And then of course we will slow down between the SE trades and the NE trades. We will see.”
Roland Jourdain (Veolia Environnement: “ On paper, everything is fine and we’re sailing faster. Except that I’m in the situation that Michel (Desjoyeaux) described the other day: the road is rather bumpy ! I’m speeding along at 25-30 knots on rough seas. It’s tough on the boat and on the skipper. It’s hard enough trying to stand up. I’m keeping an eye on my repairs to make sure they hold up. The stars come out ant night, but by day, it’s cloudy. The real problem is the cross sea and I keep finding myself heading straight at the waves. I don’t really want to think about the finish. It will come soon enough. I keep telling myself that we’re in the final two weeks of what has been a long voyage and a long project.”