Bulletin: 2nd November 2006

26.3 knots on TEMENOS II’ speedo
 
At the 1600 hour ranking, the five leading boats had gybed to the West, some leaving it later than others like Sill-Véolia, which extended its original tack in an attempt to gain some Southing. The ranking is irrevocable; the latitudinal separation observed within the group yesterday now favouring those on a more S’ly course. Virbac-Paprec is reaping those particular benefits to regain the leadership, and TEMENOS II has made up some precious miles on all the frontrunners. In fact, having covered 345 miles, the monohull has been the fastest of the fleet over the past 24 hours; a sure sign that the Swiss skipper is beginning to tame the brand new monohull…

Though the multihulls are displaying some blistering averages, the monohulls are certainly not lacking. Once again not many skippers were able to take part in the radio chat session, but hearing Jean Le Cam live announcing peaks of 22 knots of boat speed, we can well imagine that the skippers have a lot to do on deck. Since last night, the leaders from the Imoca fleet have been making advances to the North of a depression and are using it to lengthen their stride still further. There are messy seas and conditions onboard are wet but the skipper of TEMENOS II is not complaining.

"There are cross seas and the troughs are around 3 metres high. These aren’t the best conditions for TEMENOS II to show what she’s made of so I’m spending a fair amount of time at the helm. The boat is fabulous. She is light and I’m really enjoying helming her. We’ve been making a constant 20 knots for a good while and I have recorded a peak of 26.3 knots on the GPS", enthused Dominique when contacted by his shore crew at 1630 hours today.

After gybing at around 1100 hours this morning, a rather tricky manoeuvre in 25/30 knots of wind, the monohull is now making for the Azores archipelago, which the frontrunners are set to reach this evening. It will doubtless be a delicate passage due to the numerous wind shadows from these volcanic islands, some of which have very high peaks. Two multihulls got stuck there earlier making less than 10 knots, losing numerous miles to their adversaries who were flying along at over 20 knots.

Clearly, this will be a challenging passage, one where the race may not necessarily be won, but may well be lost. Great care must be taken to avoid this pitfall.

On shore eyes are riveted to the weather charts; the weather routers working relentlessly to decide whether to cross though or round the islands. The various strategies remain secret, until tomorrow that is…

At less than 150 miles off the Azores, TEMENOS II should arrive there in 7 to 8 hours’ time.

At the 1600 hour ranking, TEMENOS II was positioned in 5th place, 81 miles behind the leader, to 115 miles yesterday at the same time.

1600 Ranking

Place	Bateau / Skipper	Latitude	Longitude	Vit.	Cap	Dist. But	Dist. 1er
1	Virbac-Paprec Jean-P Dick	39 26.12' N	24 13.32' W	17	259	2447	0
2	Sill et Veolia Roland Jourdain	39 20.48' N	23 58.76' W	13	235	2455	8.1
3	VM Matériaux Jean Le Cam	40 01.96' N	24 02.16' W	17	250	2469.7	22.8
4	Artemis Brian Thompson	39 54.25' N	22 39.56' W	17	263	2520.7	73.7
5	Temenos II Dominique Wavre	39 33.36' N	22 21.92' W	19	260	2528.6	81