“It’s great and I’m really pleased to be sailing on this tack directly towards the finish. It’s something I haven’t been able to do that much with all the low pressure areas I had to get around. The boat is sailing smoothly through the water. I’m in the fairly variable north-easterly trade winds, which are varying between 20 and 28 knots.” Francis Joyon sounded upbeat this Wednesday lunchtime: the IDEC maxi trimaran is sailing at around 25 knots and the solo sailor is clocking up the miles. He is back up to days sailing more than 540 miles. “I’ve got just 300 miles left before the Equator. I shall be crossing into the Southern Hemisphere in around fifteen hours, so during the night for you in Europe,” declared Francis.
The other good news is that “I have managed to repair the link rods between the rudders on the floats. I’ll sort it out completely when I finish, but the repair job is working perfectly well for now. I no longer have to keep switching them over each time I change tack. I haven’t had any other worries apart from what I call my daily routine jobs: a sheet that gives up the ghost, a line that needs replacing, just a few little things like that.”
The Doldrums are active and spread out
So, everything is going well, as IDEC prepares to finish her eighth day of sailing this afternoon after sailing almost 3000 miles and with Rio just 1800 miles ahead. Yes, it’s going well, but there is one notable exception, as the latest forecasts for the passage through the Intertropical Convergence Zone are not that certain and so the skipper of IDEC is unable to come up with an idea of his ETA in Rio de Janeiro.
The reason for that is “On my North-South route, I don’t have any real choice about how to tackle the Doldrums, except some minor adjustments of a few miles along the way. The area has stretched right out. I’m already to get a taste of what lies ahead, as I’m starting to sail under some very dark clouds. Yesterday, the forecast talked about a strip 200 miles wide, but today, they’re forecasting more or less twice that with around 300 or 400 miles. Inside that zone according to the forecasts, there is a bit of everything with light NE’ly winds, but also calms and sometimes even southerlies straight into our bows. I’m not panicking yet, as I know there is very often a difference between what is forecast and what we find out there on the water.”
What about after that? “If we look a little further ahead, it looks like I’m going to have to deal with an area of calms between Salvador da Bahia and Rio around 21st April… but other forecasts show a relatively decent breeze for this final stretch. I’d really like that, as a strong breeze with the boat sailing close to the wind will allow me to hoist the Sail of Hope, that I have kept back for the moment waiting for the right conditions.”
Just to remind you, the Sail of Hope was signed by the Ambassadors for this Friendship Route the new record between Bordeaux and Rio de Janeiro. Among those, who signed it (see our previous articles) there was for example the whole of the French football team as well as the Girondins de Bordeaux. This sail will be auctioned with proceeds going to Brazilian charities fighting against poverty and to the ICM, the Brain and Spinal Cord Institute in Paris, which Francis Joyon and IDEC have always supported.
In short
At noon CET (1000hrs UTC) on Wednesday 16th April 2014, after 7 days and 19 hours of sailing, Francis Joyon was sailing on IDEC at 27.8 knots on a SSE bearing (173°), at 05°04 North and 34°47 West, or in other words, 600 miles from the eastern tip of the Horn of Brazil. Distance covered since the start in Bordeaux: 2968 miles. Distance to the finish in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil): 1844 miles.