Bulletin: 4th June 2007

A ghostly start to the race! 

The Calais Round Britain Race yesterday set off at 1430 hours from Pas de Calais in North Eastern France. The start will doubtless go down in history as you had to be within 100 metres of the fleet to stand any chance of making out the majestic silhouettes of the eleven 60 foot Imoca monohulls participating in the event. The lack of visibility must have left a number of spectators hungry for a clear sighting of the fleet but it didn't stop the fleet from commencing battle. For his first participation, Dominique Wavre and crew, were at the front from the outset, vying for leadership with PRB (Vincent Riou). In the early morning, Jean Le Cam got a slight edge on the duo.

Questioned a few hours before the start, the skipper of TEMENOS IIfocused on the likely pitfalls of this circumnavigation of the British Isles. "It’s a very interesting course. Most of it is likely to be raced in light winds. Such demanding weather conditions will require a huge amount of concentration from the crew and a fair few litres of coffee! We have already seen the relatively homogenous level of the fleet in this type of weather during the exhibition races, so we know that we're really going to have to be at our best in the first few hours of the race and above all hook onto the right wagon."

For the time being, we have achieved the initial goal for the first 24 hours of racing for TEMENOS II, currently in 3rd position at the 1600 hour ranking (French time), having hooked onto the right wagon. Benefiting from more breeze at the head of the fleet, the first boats seemed to have significantly increased their lead over the past few hours. At 1600 hours, Aviva, then in 5th position, already had an 85 mile deficit on the leader. This number of miles after just 24 hours at sea, must be beginning to weigh heavy on the chasing pack, even though it looks likely that the leaders will hit a calm zone enabling those behind to make up some ground. However, in the next few hours, the leaders are likely to extend their lead further judging by the boat speeds at the 1600 hour ranking.

TEMENOS II onto the right wagon

TEMENOS II and Cheminées Poujoulat were positioned making 6 knots, whilst VM Matériaux and PRB were displaying 12 knots of boat speed; the latter clearly in a different pocket of air. Nevertheless, at less than 4 miles from PRB at the noon ranking, Dominique Wavre’s monohull didn’t appear to have been in the same wind system as these two predecessors, instead watching powerless as their two playmates made the most of the additional air.

At present, the Swiss team can but hope that a vein of wind quickly comes to extricate them from this zone, otherwise they may well have to face the price. We may get a hint of what's to come in the next ranking at 2000 hours…