Bulletin: 5th December

A miraculous cold front 

For the past 2 days, the future has been clearer for the chasing pack. Whilst the frontrunners prepare to round the Saint Helena High, which is barring their route and forcing them to bend their trajectory southwards, the rest of the fleet which is currently escaping the influence of this high pressure, are making the most of the situation to take a shortcut. There are fewer miles for this group to cover and they also have better speed due to the influence of a cold front, which only concerns the top three.

Aboard TEMENOS II, in contrast to Véolia Environnement, where they threw off their T-Shirts during the day’s visio-conference, the foulies and harnesses were out. Relieved above all else to have found some new wind, Michèle certainly wasn’t complaining about the wet atmosphere which reigned aboard. The boat was accelerating once again and that was surely all that counted in the eyes of the sailor, questioned this afternoon by the race organisation.

“We have finally hit some wind like our little friends and that gives you a boost and inspires you to accelerate even more. Since yesterday evening we have been in a front and we’ll be trying to cut the corner, so as not to drop further South in order to try and hold onto the wind. We hope that the front will carry us along to the next gateway on a direct course.

The wind is fairly fluky. We have between 18 and 32 knots, forcing us to gradually adapt the sail area as we hit the flurries of wind."

The proximity of the roaring 40’s means that they are having to make a few adjustments aboard the boats, such as clothing for starters: “We have stowed the sails down below, which we were using as moveable ballast on deck. Only two are left on deck now in order to prevent us, in a big wipe out, from putting ourselves in danger by pulling out the guardrails and stanchions.

Down below everything is safely stowed away. It’s already a shaky ride and we’re expecting it to get a lot more bouncy. The warm clothes are out as are the tethers and the harnesses.

With a total of 8 circumnavigations to the credit of these two co-skippers, we can bet that there will be no concessions on safety aboard Temenos II.