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High-speed, off-wind sailing

01/11/09

The majority of the 16 Class40s racing in La Solidaire du Chocolat are currently in running and reaching conditions with the southern group showing impressive speed averages as the trio of boats hook into the elusive North-Easterly Trade Winds. At the front of the fleet, Tanguy de Lamotte and Adrien Hardy on Initiatives-Novedia took the lead early on Sunday morning and at 0800 GMT today, the French duo have built a 20 mile lead over Giovanni Soldini and Pietro d'Ali on Telecom Italia with de Lamotte and Hardy averaging 12.3 knots _ three knots faster than Soldini and d'Ali. Trailing the Italian team by 40 miles, 3rd and 4th place is becoming interchangeable with two boats separated by three miles and racing side-by-side as Bruno Jourdren and Bernard Stamm on Cheminées Poujoulat inch ahead of Damien Seguin and Armel Tripon on Cargill-MTTM in the latest position poll with Jourdren’s Rogers Design Class40 averaging 11.3 knots.

In 5th place, trailing the lead boat by 191 miles, Tim Wright and Nicko Brennan on Sail4Cancer are currently averaging 10.8 knots and report 15-25 knots of south-westerly breeze over the past 12 hours with a moderate sea state. “Finally some sailing off the wind!” commented Brennan earlier this morning. “We have the Code Zero up and making good progress down the line. Has been a lovely night of sailing with good breeze, clear skies and a full moon,” continues Wright’s Australian co-skipper. “We've seen some clouds and lightning around, so have been wary of getting too close to anything looking like a squall,” adds Brennan. Following Wright and Brennan’s track, Peter Harding and Miranda Merron on 40 Degrees trail Sail4Cancer by 67 miles. “We are getting used to this not going upwind stuff,” confirmed Merron on Sunday morning. “We’ve been reaching since yesterday - mainly glorious sunshine, and moonlight at night,” she reports. “Compared to the first part of the race, this is idyllic, despite the water pouring over the boat (OK, it's warm water), and quite an exciting few hours of sustained squalls during the night, complete with lightning for special effects.” There is, however, no chance to sit back and relax now the headwinds have ceased. “It got fruity enough that we both stayed on deck for much of the night, one person steering, the other ready to ease sails,” continues the British co-skipper. Currently averaging 11 knots, Harding and Merron are focussed on boat speed. “As reaching involves the boat being heeled over, and water everywhere, housekeeping has been put off for another day,” says Merron.

Further south than Wright and Harding’s track, the Finnish duo of Jouni Romppanen and Sam Öhman in 7th on Tieto are averaging 10 knots while further north in lighter breeze, Felipe Cubillos and Daniel Bravo Silva on Desafio Cabo de Hornos hold 8th place, trailing the Finns by 30 miles at 0800 GMT today. “It hasn’t all been torture over the past two weeks,” reflected Bravo Silva last night. “We have both enjoyed the adrenalin rush of being on the limit of control in 40-50 knot headwinds, encased in a drysuit with just your eyes uncovered as a wave crashes down on you every five seconds.” However, since Saturday, conditions have improved. “Right now, I’ve removed my drysuit hood for the first time in days and I’ve got Pearl Jam on the MP3 player,” reports the Chilean co-skipper. “I no longer need to wear diving apparatus in the cockpit, there’s a beautiful moon astern of us and with the Code Zero up, the boat feels really stable,” he explains. “As Felipe always reminds me, no weather lasts forever and in moments like these, the hardship of the past days is a small price to pay.”

Remaining north has proved a minor setback for Jacques Fournier and Jean-Edouard Criquioche in 9th place on Groupe Picoty, but the change from relentless upwind sailing is welcome. “Finally, our first really beautiful day of the race,” reported Criquioche late on Saturday night. “A huge sun, steady breeze and a gentle swell. We were able to dry our clothes, clean ourselves up and shave and – extreme joy – put on some dry boxer shorts!” Currently averaging 8.4 knots, the French duo realise they must drop down further. “We were a little too far north to grab the express train the other boats hopped onto and we must slip south, although the boats down there may have less wind than us on Monday,” says Criquioche. The two boats furthest east in the northern group, Denis Lazat and Frédéric Nouel in 10th on PLAN and Stephen Card and Shaun Murphy on ORBIS in 11th are sailing in easterly breeze at a slightly slower angle than the boats further west and are making sub-ten knot speed averages.

The two Class40s still playing catch-up after pit-stops in Spain and Portugal have taken dramatically different routes into the North Atlantic: furthest north in the fleet, Patrice Carpentier and his Mexican co-skipper, Victor Maldonado, have taken Crédit Maritime close to the Azores and in 14th place, the duo have found north-easterly breeze and are currently averaging 11.3 knots, while Yves Eclaret and Lionel Regnier on Vale Inco Nouvelle Calédonie in 16th place took a route far further south and have run directly into a light patch. “Attention all you nautical web-surfers,” warned Eclaret this morning. “We want to reveal a big internet scandal. For ten days, a certain Monsieur GRIB – who runs a website for single-people who don’t get out much – has sold us a dummy,” he explains. “Exploiting our enormous naivity, Monsieur GRIB has taken our dollars while enticing us with all sorts of tricks and promising us vast wealth, good looks, superior intelligence, meetings with beautiful women and – most importantly – arranging to put us in touch with the Trade Winds.” Currently averaging under four knots, the duo feel robbed. “In brief, Monsieur GRIB is dangerous and exploits the ignorance of people like us and often preys on the elderly,” advises the French skipper. “For example, my poor friend Lionel here isn’t that young anymore and has been caught in this trap for ten days and now and refuses to leave the computer!”

The southern trio of Class40s are spread over 162 miles led by Erik Nigon and Marc Jouany in 12th onboard Axa Atout Coeur Pour Aides, with David Consorte and Aubry Arnaud in 13th on Adriatech and the British duo of Mike West and Paul Worswick in 15th on Keysource once again polling the highest speed average in the fleet at 13.3 knots. Although the northern pack in the fleet has received a consistent hammering in headwinds, it hasn’t been entirely soft sailing for the southern group. “This is the third time I’ve been sailing in this area in four years,” explains Erik Nigon on Axa Atout Coeur Pour Aides. “I am always surprised by the diversity of the sea state which, in this case, is stirred-up by heavy weather in the north,” continues the 50 year-old French skipper.  “Sometimes we are shaken by a cross sea and swell and we leap and roll and must cling on for safety. Sometimes we slip-off the peak of a wave and accelerate down with water hurtling back across the deck,” he says this morning. “I really want to thank the race organisation for providing such an excellent race route, but next time, please put a mandatory gate in the Canary Islands so we can all experience these nights of banging around in a swell.”



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