Club Med at a low ebb
Saturday, February 17, 11.00 pm GMT
"It's without a doubt one of the smallest days for Club Med
since the start," Denis Horeau said this evening at race
headquarers. At the 11.00 pm GMT fix, the numbers indeed
indicated a very modest average: only 216 miles run over the
last 24 hours. The leader of The Race is this evening 380
miles off the coast of Brazil. She tacked between 9.00 pm
and 10.00 pm GMT and is now on a northerly course. Loïck
is in a gentle northwesterly and is still heading east . . .
"Grant must still be in a nasty sea on top of everything else" (read: wind on the
nose). "He doesn't have much room to maneuver because he's close to the coast of
Brazil . . . it's a tricky situation." And as the party most interested remarked, "a finish
at the end of February seems highly unlikely – let's arrange instead to meet in
Marseille in March." It's true that given recent performance, the rhythm has been
interrupted somewhat.
Innovation Explorer isn't really going any faster, and is heading back to the northwest
while hunting for wind: "Loïck's ploy right now is to go look for some easterlies around
30° South (he's now at 39° South)," Denis Horeau noted. "His position in longitude is
much better than Club Med's and this makes it an interesting moment in the race.
We'll see whether Roger's easterly option will in fact pay off."
Warta-Polpharma, having set off again from Wellington at 2.14 pm GMT in 3rd place,
is currently sailing at 13 knots. Roman Paszke's squad is on the verge of being in an
almost ideal position: "after 45° South, they'll be in a steady westerly flow and should
accelerate," Denis Horeau continued. "They have plenty of wind to their south and
they can adjust into it at will: in short, they are well placed." The ex-Commodore
Explorer has enlisted a crew that's on a par with her glorious record . . .
Tony is just rounding Cape Farewell (at the north of New Zealand's South Island)
where he seems to have lost the pace he had been keeping up for several days. And
from the way they look right now, the men from the Baltic will be able to escape while
Team Legato descends Cook Strait.
JB
Translation by JMc
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