1000 Milles De Calais 2004 - Ecover & Bonduelle Neck And Neck

Tuesday 11 May 2004, ECOVER has been neck and neck in upwind conditions with the leading boat since the beginning of the Calais 1,000 Miles and they have hardly lost sight of each other since their departure. The boats have been generally within half a mile of each other, keeping the crew on their toes and fighting relentlessly with everything they have got. The fleet passed Bishop Rock in the early hours of this morning and are now heading out across the Irish Sea in close reaching, upwind conditions towards the Fastnet Rock.

ECOVER has had fairly steady conditions in the night with the stars showing them the way and the steady conditions with light winds from the north look set to follow for next few days. Golding told us, “Its all been very interesting and we are learning a lot. Bonduelle is certainly pretty quick! From our perspective, it would be better to have some different wind conditions to give us an opportunity to test different configurations, but we’ll be reaching on the way back, so may not see a lot of change. Having said that, the Fastnet Rock could restart the race. It was sad news about Sill (retired due to problems with their keel), and clearly we hope Bilou will be able to rectify the problems before the Transat at the end of this month.”

On approaching the Isles of Scillies early this morning, Brian Thompson (who helps Golding with the navigation) described the scene: “We had a little bit more wind between Land’s End – up to 13 knots. As a result we changed sails a lot, but otherwise it’s been a really easy night. A lot of stars to steer by and we can see Bonduelle just ahead of us. We always thought Bonduelle was going to be a good boat and it’s really interesting racing with her now. We’ll see what the downwind conditions are like at the Fastnet and if there’s a difference in boat speed there, but upwind we seem very, very similar. When we go round the Rock the wind could go quite light because of the land and then on the way back more reaching and downwind.”

Land is not a factor in this leg to and from the Fastnet Rock until the last few miles before Ireland and the winds should be steady and the tides less important. There are often significant advantages to being to one side of the course and the fleet can separate widely. There can be big wins and losses as you often lose sight of the competition here.

Ranking / Skipper / Boat / Distance to Finish / Distance to Leader

1 Jean le Cam, Bonduelle, 561.8
2 Mike Golding, ECOVER , 564.1, 2.4
3 Jean-Pierre Dick, Virbac, 571.2, 9.5
4 Vincent Riou, PRB, 572.9, 11.1
5 Joé Seeten, Arcelor Dunkerque, 628.6, 66.8

Retirements:
Roland Jourdain, Sill

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