Bulletin: 14th November 2007

Little respite for the fleet

On listening to the first radio sessions of the day this morning, you could sense the beginnings of a certain irritation amongst the skippers. Evidently the sailors are hungry for big surf and long glides, to enable them to eat up the miles, so these first slow days of racing have proven to be quite wearing.

Fortunately this 3rd day has provided them with a little respite. The speedos reveal that the boat's have picked up the pace again, doubtless to the great satisfaction of the skippers, some of them even managing to rack up double figures. The fleet is clearly not out of the woods yet though as the weather situation remains complicated as far as Gibraltar, and even beyond according to certain forecasts. However, today should enable them to release a little of the nervous tension accumulated since the start.

Contacted at the start of the afternoon, Michèle looked back at the first days of racing. "It's true, these conditions are pretty laborious and require a state of permanent concentration. We’re keen to get to the other side (into the Atlantic). It was a hard night, constantly trimming. There’s not a minute where you say to yourself that it's okay, I can switch over to automatic pilot. Despite all that, the night went well and we didn’t make any bad tack changes. Since this morning, the wind has filled in and it's now well established. We have between 13 and 14 knots of W'ly, which is likely to fill in a bit more over the course of the afternoon.

We’re sailing close to the wind under jib. For the time being we’re being fairly conservative, avoiding overly extreme options. We’d prefer not to get too close to the coast but for now the wind is favourable on this tack so we don’t really have a lot of choice.

We didn’t have time to eat well this morning, so we made ourselves a copious meal this lunchtime. We’ll try to sleep a bit now to recharge the batteries a little in preparation for whatever awaits us at Gibraltar.”

To accompany the beating comes the joys of shifting moveable ballast. “It’s quite impressive the amount of things you can shift around as ballast in the boat. When you've come out of such a session, your arms really ache. The big waterproof bags filled with food are particularly heavy. It’s making us keen to hurry up and eat, but sachets and sachets of dried food weighing 80 g a sachet, are likely to take a while to get through!" (laughs)

Whilst the wind is filling in, a slight chop is building again. “It was too wonderful to last” said Michèle. The comfort of dry clothes and the softness of the skin sheltered from the salt spray, don’t necessarily have a place on a round the world race. And for Michèle this small comfort came to an end today. “I got caught by my first bow wave this morning as we were making a sail change. I had my foulies on but I’d forgotten the hood. I was furious at the time, but still, it had to happen sometime.” (laughs)

At the heart of the fleet, everyone is now fully into race mode and the boats are fiercely jockeying for position. After sailing in contact with Hugo Boss, then catching a glimpse of Estralla Damm yesterday, it’s now the turn of Delta Dore to cross the wake of TEMENOS II.

At the 1500 hour ranking, TEMENOS II was in 4th place, 24 miles behind the leader, PRB.

Ranking 15h00
Rk	Boat	Dist to lead	Vmg	Latitude	Longtitude	Average speed
1	PRB	0,0	7,3	36 30.29' N	3 31.39' W	9,2
2	PAPREC-VIRBAC 2	4,4	8,3	36 26.99' N	3 24.37' W	10
3	ESTRELLA DAMM	22,0	7,2	36 43.09' N	3 08.01' W	9,3
4	TEMENOS II	24,6	7,1	36 35.02' N	3 01.06' W	9,4
5	DELTA DORE	28,0	7,0	36 32.40' N	2 55.70' W	9,3
6	HUGO BOSS	38,4	6,8	36 35.76' N	2 43.45' W	9
7	VEOLIA ENVIRONNEMENT	61,0	5,1	36 14.98' N	2 09.74' W	10,3
8	MUTUA MADRILENA	61,6	6,1	36 30.15' N	2 11.98' W	9
9	EDUCACION SIN FRONTERAS	173,4	8,7	37 38.98' N	0 15.78' W	8,8