"Making
the best of a bad job"
After an average day yesterday, the Cap Gemini
and Schneider Electric trimaran has been averaging
nearly 20 knots off the Brazilian coast for the
past few hours, making the most of some reasonably
sustained westerlies.
"It´s allowing Geronimo to get a little
further east. The waves are disgusting, but at
least we´re making good headway. The trouble
is that there´s an enormous area of calm
to our north. There may be a tiny mouse hole that
we can get through, but we´re not entirely
certainly where it is. We´re wondering how
we can get out of the bloody awful position we
find ourselves in. Nevertheless, when I look at
the route to the east that I we could have chosen,
I can see that we couldn´t have got through,
so that makes things a little easier to accept,
but it still comes down to a choice of two poor
routes and let´s hope that we´ve chosen
the least bad. We´re pretty certain that
we haven´t missed any potential opportunity
and that there´s really nothing else to
be done. Making for Cape Town to pick up the St.
Helena high along the coast of Africa would have
added around 2,000 kilometres to the route. It´s
true that what we have isn´t great, but
it could have been worse. It´s really making
the best of a bad job, but we´re doing everything
we can to keep our spirits up. Thank goodness
that the boat is really fast in these slack winds
and filthy sea conditions. Geronimo has a lot
of talent, which comes from a combination of here
elegance and sophistication. This trimaran can
succeed where other boats would be in trouble.
But for all of that, we are not travelling at
the speed we would like", comments the skipper.
Olivier de Kersauson and his 10-man crew are having
to make many manoeuvres to cope with frequent
wind changes and the arrival of storm systems.
"Sail changes are being made quickly and
with good humour. We´re in a very precarious
weather system. Geronimo still has some good wind
at the moment, but it´s impossible to say
if that will hold. We hope that we can stay in
this small thalweg which is heading east. It´s
good for us, because it allows us to set a heading
25° off the route and get further east. We´ve
already managed to stay with it for about fifteen
hours and make some pretty good progress. You
get the impression of gliding on a current in
an airless pocket. It´s a pretty good feeling
to be able to strike the right balance in this
small wind system, but I don´t know how
long it is going to last", concludes Olivier.
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Geronimo's position : Day 46
Geronimo's position at 03:00 GMT
