06.12.2007
Slight fright
Since this morning, we can bear witness to a certain homogeneity of speeds
within the heart of the fleet. The boats are sailing before a front and all of
them have stepped up the pace since yesterday. In the lead, the gaps have
reindexed the same, with the exception of Hugo Boss, which is benefiting from a
excellent predisposition to reaching, to make up ground on the 3rd placed Véolia
Environnement. Nevertheless, with the differences in speed displayed in favour
of Alex Thomson’s monohull, it shouldn't be forgotten that in a round the world
race, the potential for speed of each boat is only one parameter among many.
Weather tactics and reliability also have a decisive role to play here.
The top four are now sailing in the roaring 40’s, the introduction to which will
probably be delayed for their pursuers, who have opted for a more direct course,
with considerably less S’ly than the leaders.
Aboard Temenos II, emotions have been running quite high over the past few
hours, with electrical problems leaving the two co-skippers in a cold sweat.
This was not the only cause for concern though as Michèle explained.
“We really believed that we’d been caught up by the calm conditions yesterday
night. All of a sudden we saw the sky clear, and the wind dropped to 8 knots.
Fortunately we managed to extract ourselves from this zone, but it was really
dicey. Since then, we’d had a good, well established breeze, which is fairly
favourable. Now suddenly we've ended up a little above the rhumb line and right
now we're trying to drop down a little further to the South. We should continue
to make headway with this front for a little while yet, then a big depression
should kick in and accompany us during our tricky passage around South Africa.
We had an electrical black-out this morning. Without warning everything shut
down including the automatic pilot. Fortunately, I was trimming in the cockpit
and I lashed out at the helm when I felt the pilot switch off, but we weren’t
far off broaching. Dominique is in the process of looking into the electrical
installation at the moment. I hope we can resolve the problem quickly.
We're still reaching in 20, 25 knots but with a slightly wider angle to the wind
than yesterday so the atmosphere is a little less wet onboard all of a sudden.
Yesterday it was like having a permanent shower on deck. We’ve made the most of
these new conditions to put on a completely new set of clothes. It feels good to
be warm and above all dry again, which is a habit we'd almost forgotten.”
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