LATEST NEWS

The southern group move in

04/11/09

In the past 24 hours, the race leaders, Tanguy de Lamotte and Adrien Hardy on Initiatives-Novedia, have squeezed an extra 10 miles into their lead. At 0800 GMT this morning, Lamotte and Hardy are 420 miles north-east of the mandatory race gate off St. Barts with a 121 mile lead over Giovanni Soldini and Pietro d'Ali on Telecom Italia. Both the Italian team in 2nd and Bruno Jourdren and Bernard Stamm on Cheminées Poujoulat in 3rd have a pit stop in St. Barts scheduled and the two boats look set to arrive on the Caribbean island simultaneously with Jourdren and Stamm _ just further south than Soldini and d'Ali _ closing in on Telecom Italia since Tuesday morning, currently trailing the Italian team by just six miles with both Class40s making matching speeds of just under 10 knots. In 4th place, Damien Seguin and Armel Tripon on Cargill-MTTM are furthest south in the leading pack in marginally softer easterly breeze making 8.8 knots, dropping back slightly in the past 24 hours and currently trailing Cheminées Poujoulat by 11 miles. With the front five boats separated by 137 miles, the second wave of four Class40s are under 100 miles apart and have dropped back behind the leaders in lighter breeze. Leaders of the chasing pack, Tim Wright and Nicholas Brennan in 5th place on Sail4Cancer, have lost 24 miles to Seguin and Tripon since dawn yesterday, but hold a 35 mile lead over their British rivals Peter Harding and Miranda Merron on 40 Degrees in 6th with the Finnish duo of Jouni Romppanen and Sam Öhman in 7th on Tieto shadowing Harding and Merron to the south, 40 miles off their port quarter and making the best speed of the group at a little over seven knots. Furthest north in the group holding 8th place, the Chilean duo of Felipe Cubillos and Daniel Bravo Silva on Desafio Cabo de Hornos trail the Finns by 22 miles and are currently averaging just over five knots.

In 15th place isolated to the north and nearly 1,000 miles behind the lead boat, Patrice Carpentier and his Mexican co-skipper, Victor Maldonado, on Credit Maritime are making the best speed in the fleet at 9.8 knots while the trio of yachts opting for the southern route into the North Atlantic via the Canary Islands are mixing-in with the Class40s of the northern fleet. At 0800 GMT, leaders of the southern group in 11th place, Erik Nigon and Marc Jouany on Axa Atout Coeur Pour Aides, were 59 miles behind Denis Lazat and Frédéric Nouel on PLAN with both boats on port gybe and Nigon’s boat making fractionally better pace at nine knots. “Since the wind dropped in force and the surfing is over, we can finally start speaking without shouting,” explained Nigon earlier. “The crashing of water across the boat and the howling wind generated a deafening background noise which meant that you would spend a lot of time repeating what you’d said,” he continued. “We’ve now found a little area of calm, so it’s ‘adios’ to surfing in 20 knots of breeze,” confirms the French skipper. “We’re surrounded by heavy, grey and ominous clouds filled with lightning flashes. They’re fairly distant at the moment, but we have switched-off all the electrics as a precaution a couple of times.”

Meanwhile on PLAN, the calm conditions have provided a chance to make repairs. “Frédéric has purged some air bubbles in the fuel lines,” reports Lazat this morning. “I suppose there should be no surprise that there are bubbles as the diesel has certainly been shaken about!” The arduous work has revealed one fortunate fact onboard. “We’ve also found that we have used less fuel than we thought, so a pit stop in St. Barts is off the cards and we can head straight into the Caribbean,” assures the French skipper. With the diesel issue sorted, further maintenance in the light airs continues. “The inside of the boat looks like a sailmakers loft as Frédéric works on spinnaker repairs and I think this will take about two days of graft,” estimates Lazat. “I regret not having taken the sewing course offered by our sailmakers last summer. Next summer maybe….”




← Actualités précédente - Actualités suivante →