Bulletin: 5th June 2007

Calm zones for the leaders

Though yesterday's sailing soon made the crew on TEMENOS II forget the first gruelling hours of racing spent tracking the slightest sniff of breeze and avoiding windless zones, it would seem that the progress of the leading group will now be dramatically slowed.

The spectre of light winds is expected to surface at the front of the fleet. Over the past 24 hours, the leading trio has continued to rack up the miles, even extending their lead. After a little over two days at sea, the fleet is now stretched out across 185 miles, substantial deficits that the very calm weather conditions expected at the head of the fleet should go someway to reabsorbing - it remains to be seen what that proportion is.

As regards the ranking, it’s the status quo; TEMENOS II firmly holding onto it’s 3rd place and keeping to within twenty miles of Vincent Riou and Jean Le Cam. The latter are sailing within sight of each other off the Irish coast and Dominique Wavre fully intends to make the most of the advantage which his position as 'hunter' provides him.

A slight W'ly separation for TEMENOS II

"The calm zones are forecast over Ireland and the two leaders will slow up considerably in the next few hours. We’re going to try to hang a left! joked Dominique when questioned at the noon radio session at Press HQ today. With a slight W'ly separation, TEMENOS II was displaying 3 more knots of boat speed than his two predecessors at the latest 1600 hour ranking. We’re making the most of it to make up some ground; four miles already since the 1200 hour ranking.

Behind, relegated to nearly 70 miles from the leaders, Bernard Stamm will be hoping to benefit from the situation in order to get back with the top trio.

Though the back runners see the arrival of this high pressure over Ireland as a chance to make up all or some of their deficit, the leaders will inevitably be less enthusiastic. Aboard TEMENOS II we are preparing for a difficult night, "we’re going to need some energy to get through this tricky stage in the calm conditions… Temenos is slipping along nicely in the light winds. It's very enjoyable, but we'll have to be on top of things in order to do well."

The next couple of days clearly aren't going to be ideal for showing off the true potential of their machine..