Bulletin: 15th November 2007

The Atlantic at last!

It was with global relief amongst the fleet, that the skippers have successively bid farewell to the Mediterranean. Last night Paprec-Virbac led the way through the gateway of Gibraltar at 0225 hours GMT, closely followed by PRB (0245 hours), then Estrella Damm (0733 hours) and TEMENOS II (0959 hours).

With the Gibraltar Straits now in their wake, each of the participants are hoping to leave behind them the capricious weather, which has brazenly toyed with their nerves with little let-up since the start. Of the 500 miles or so which separate Barcelona from the Straits of Gibraltar, the average speeds haven’t exactly been anything to write home about, but they may well have a deciding role during the boats' return. Though it’s fairly rare to see the final ranking turned upside down during the final sprint of a finish decided on the Atlantic coast, we can well imagine that in the Mediterranean, the hegemony of the leader may be contested all the way to the finish line in Barcelona, unless they have a very comfortable lead.

This morning, a number of skippers were hoping to quickly put thoughts of their final night in the Mediterranean behind them. This was the case for Jérémie Beyou aboard Delta Dore, trapped on the approach to the Spanish coast, who conceded over 60 miles to the leaders, PRB and Virbac Paprec, authors of a great start to the race. Situated at the front of the fleet, these two monohulls are continuing to reap the benefits of more favourable conditions, which should enable them to stretch out their lead.

Aboard Temenos II, the night also brought its fair share of manœuvres, shifting of moveable ballast, becalming, violent and unexpected gusts, and counter currents. Even though the latest forecasts show a small depression stirring things up as far as the Canaries, the exit from the Mediterranean is still viewed as a ‘deliverance’ for Michèle, contacted early this afternoon. With the help of a wind which finally looks like it’s going to establish itself, and prior to tackling the umpteenth change of tack, the sailor provides us with a bit of news from onboard.

“We’ve just finished eating. I’m going to try and sleep a little as nearly 12 hours have gone by since my last stretch of sleep. It was a hellish night! We were becalmed for a large part of it and the current even made us go backwards at one point. Later we found ourselves with 30 knots of wind on the nose in boat-breaking seas, even though the grib files were showing 20. The seas were bad and the boat was slamming violently. We've struggled to extract ourselves from the Straits of Gibraltar and it looked like the Med had decided not to let us go. We’re happy to be back in the Atlantic again; it's a real deliverance. We haven’t stopped since yesterday, concentrating simply on making tack changes one after the other according to the current and the wind variations. If I were to add up all the moveable ballast we've shifted, it wouldn't be far off a tonne! For the time being it's rather like a souk on board. We’ll leave the tidying up till later! For now, we’re focussing on negotiating the passage of the depression on zone, either rounding to the North of it or cutting through it…”

PRB and Paprec-Virbac have clearly adopted two different strategies and we can see their courses have been diverging since this morning. Prior to being able benefit from the tradewinds, the boats will first have to find them, as for the time being, it looks like another meteorological brain teaser is emerging before the skippers in the Barcelona World Race…