Transat
Jacques Vabre - Virbac Flying Towards Uncertainty;
Hellomoto Opens Her Wings
0700GMT
update Monohulls
MONOHULL 60'S: Virbac is heading swiftly onwards
and has a 150m advance over Sill (Jourdain/Thomson)
and 204m over Ecover (Golding/Thompson). The mileage
between the boats fluctuates a little but no major
gains from the these leaders.
Multihull
update to follow...
“Right
now, we’re just going for speed, going as
fast as the wind,” remarked Jean-Pierre
Dick (Virbac) over the sat phone. "But the
sky is cloudy and apart from the heat, I have
the distinct feeling of being in the Channel and
not the tropics. The hard thing to work out is
whether the wind will freshen under these clouds
or not, as if you reef and the wind doesn’t
rise, you don’t go at optimum speed…If
you keep all the sail up and the wind gets up
you can quickly get out of control. The Doldrums?
We are working out right now what the weather
is doing there, and we are well aware that even
our lead could melt like snow. We’re also
trying to work out where Groupama will pass by!”
There
is a 120m West-East difference between the top
monohull and multihull, as they both begin to
anticipate the fickle conditions of the ITCZ up
ahead.
This
morning ‘Bilou’ (Jourdain –
Sill) sang a different song: “It looks like
the multi’s will cross through the Doldrums
more easily than us. And looking at certain weather
models there could be some ‘snack-stops’
for some of the monohulls. The forecast gets slightly
less favourable the nearer we get… only
when we’re in it will we see what the effects
will really be. Right now we’re in just
under 20 knots, and the boat is slipping through
a beautiful flat sea.” This morning Sill
were clocking 14 knots average boat speed with
a VMG (speed to the finish) of 12.9 knots. So
what of the next 24hrs? “We should experience
the effects of a tropical system just before the
Doldrums this afternoon coming from the East which
will generate 25/30 knots, even 40 at points,
and of course lots of rain. We’re going
to need to be on our toes as it will be a bit
of a roller coaster ride and a critical area to
get through safely!”
In
the Monohull Open 50 fleet, Hellomoto (Humphreys/Larsen)
has opened her wings as the Finot/Conq design
has pushed out a 128m lead over StorageTek (Guillemot/Salnelle).
For TJV race information go to http://www.jacques-vabre.com
