08.01.2008
Words direct from the skippers
Typical Brittany weather for Educación sin Fronteras..
Servane speaks from the boat today - We are both ok sailing with typical Brittany weather - little rain, 18 knots wind, 11 or 12 knots of boat speed, so not really fast. The Pacific Ocean is nice and not too cold, no waves, the boat is ok, we don’t know why we are not so fast… We were under spinnaker until a few hours ago, but had to luff up to head to our great next goal - Cape Horn is no joke !
Our wish for 2008? To catch the boat in front of us! It is not too cold and we will be seeing you very soon in Barcelona. When you sail I think you generally dream a lot, on land I do definitely, but I have never had a nightmares out here..
Temenos II in easy sailing...
Dominique Wavre happy but still a little frustrated - "We are now in a good situation. Its easy sailing - 20 knots of wind average, the swell is good, and our speed is good. It is very dark; there are no stars, it is pitch black and foggy...warm and humid outside and we are quite fast now because in 3 days there is a big depression coming and we are in a hurry to go east now. It is still a bit frustrating because we lost a lot of time and space to Mutua Madrileña when we were in Wellington and because we were stuck with a bad forecast. It' is better because we are in the race but we feel like we have lost four days of racing. We know the repair is good and the investigations were serious that nothing major has cracked. It was good to stop because we couldn't leave it like it was. It wasn't serious damage but it was increasing so we had to stop and put it right. We now just have to concentrate on sailing correctly. We will stay in this NW for a little longer so we will increase the distance slowly in the coming days, probably tomorrow."
Pachi Rivero - enough memories to write a book....
We are going well - spinnaker and index sail – 22 to 25 knots wind from east, fighting with Temenos II to our north. We are checking Temenos all the time, comparing their sailing angles, their speed and wind – they have a bit more wind than us and we are a bit further south and they will have a bit more than us now. We have to keep going with them, and not let them get away from us. This morning we managed to reduce the gap to 107 miles: in the next few days we will be in a low, and will get the wind a little bit earlier. We will see how the things go for us, without taking any risks…put the pressure on and try to catch and overtake them when we can.
As well as the keel repairs in Wellington, the rotation of the mast is the repair that we most appreciate because it has changed everything dramatically. The index sail especially, before on port tack the index sail had a totally different shape to now…we have different angles and it goes much better, we can trim better.
In the 2 days we were in Wellington we had a lot of work on our hands and when we first came back on board it was difficult to get back into it as we were so tired. But now we have been back on our shifts and again we are fully back in the race and feel better with all the work and repairs done...
So far I am sleeping very well, and not having nightmares! I personally don’t have any strange dreams, they are quite nice! Perhaps Paprec Virbac 2 are more tired and under more pressure, for the moment that isn’t my problem – I sleep like a log! When it is time to change shifts we wake the other one up each other by saying 'Hey it's time!', then we get up, you get dressed with your wet weather gear and then go for the coffee!. Sometimes it is a sudden wake-up to change a sail like this morning, to the spinnaker – and in that case you have to wake yourself up on the way. But normally it is quite calm you wake up and gradually have your coffee and biscuit – quite pleasant!
Here we are not so cold, and what I noticed personally about the cold was that it really brings you down – you feel more tired and you don’t eat as much, obviously you have to wear more clothes. Now it is not as cold and we don’t need to use as much clothing this time we both know that it won’t be for so long...now was for me personally the stage of the race that I was most looking forward to- Cape Horn! I am looking forward to going down there again - we are mentally prepared to face the cold now. We don’t need to go so far south like Paprec did, we are going to stay here a bit longer and put pressure on Temenos II but in 24 hours the wind will drop again. For the time being we are ok here and don’t need to go any further south.
It is strange that as the experience is happening, as things are going on you don’t actually register them until afterwards when you reflect and remember things. I am thinking more about things before than what is actually happening right now! What has most surprised me so far for example has been the experience with animals such as the seal we saw in the middle of the 'Indian Ocean' that seemed to stop and give us an incredibly strange look to say "what the hell are you guys doing here?!" - and then of course the cold. The hours of cold on the Indian Ocean, of course this is something that you remember better afterwards than in the present. I am writing it all down in my diary. It is really amazing- Nando the doctor told me I should do this, take photos, write lots of emails about everything that happens because later you are grateful of it. Later in my life I can then tell all my grandchildren about it one day in front of the fire! I am really enjoying this experience…
Mixed feelings about leaving the Southern Ocean
Damian Foxall admits that leaving behind this amazing part of the planet produce a mixture of relief and sadness - "We are still riding the low pressure we picked up on for a couple of days and it should take us round the horn. We have very choppy seas but are moving along easily with reduced sail and have been going well for the last twenty-four hours with a reasonable lead on the boat behind. All we need to do now is keep moving ahead safely and are about a day and a half away now. We are lucky to have had a nice run up, and if we manage to get that section for the race over with quickly it will be good. It can quite often be a rough ride. If we can get there in time we will get a potentially easier ride up the Atlantic. In the last 24-36 hours we have had some full-on conditions reaching, up on deck all the time, with the autopilot or not depending on the wind; trimming the sails all the time and with it very cold as well, and that takes a lot out of you. But the up side is that we have moved straight down quite quickly and are now feeling the benefits with a 1000 mile lead on Hugo Boss - it feels good nice to have that now.
It will be good if we can get up into the Atlantic on time after passing the horn. We are sailing carefully to get through these “left over” seas - in some ways the gateway to Atlantic....
Cape Horn is usually blowing really hard, depending on the wind, there is a strong funnelling effect wit the Andes, from north-north west although this time we are not sure we will have the typical 45-50 knots. I think we will have reasonably good passage but not too heavy.
In some ways the Southern Ocean is just constant; you feel it is never-ending, nearly always windy, although we have seen a bit of everything here, but it is an amazing place – you really feel that it is one of the draws but we will also be happy to leave....I have mixed feelings – I am also a little sad too as its an amazing place...
It’s one of those things you have to experience to appreciate. It's just a vast, uninhabited area that we don't come across very much anymore...you feel like you're a visitor, a very privileged one. It is a vast space - there's very little here apart from the odd island group...and there are a few little bits of civilisation that dip down into the southern ocean...like Patagonia and the tip of South America, but apart from that it's all water and isolated islands and thousands of miles away. It is incessant - it's just always blowing hard, or about to blow or just been blowing...and there's always a seaway...its quite an impressive place.
This time is different double-handed, only two of us on the boat - very demanding, it's required a lot of concentration from both us, not just steering the boat etc but implication in the sense of decisions, directions and that's very different; you are very reliant on each other. There are just two people when you're on deck with a lot of sail up if you want to do something you need the other person, there isn’t a full watch crew up on deck with you. You have to be prepared, look far ahead really plan the sail changes and how you are going to sail the boat and think about the short, medium and long term.
If you're doing 12 hours on the helm out of 24, you have plenty of time to think and appreciate your surroundings - there's plenty of time for taking the waves in, and fully appreciating the southern ocean..."
Lots of R+R in the southern ocean says Alex Thomson...
"Come the start of the race we had only really just launched the boat and I suppose the Vendée was in the back of my mind but there was too much to do just getting ready for one race. For me there was the fundamental choice in the Imoca calendar between the TJV and BWR … and I am so, so glad that I have done this race because you just can not buy this kind of experience. You can't buy the opportunity to sail in the southern ocean, and it gives you lots of opportunities to think about the improvements you can make, and how you are going to sail one of these beasts alone - the experience is absolutely priceless...
There are lots of little things that I have learnt with Capey -one of greatest things about doing this race is that when two of you sail, you sail harder, you get more comfortable with the boat’s performance, so when I come down here next time on my own I know I wont be sailing quite so hard so I should be even more in my comfort zone....we talk about the different sails we are carrying, slightly different ways of setting things. One of the big things will be trying to reduce the friction on board – the boat is incredibly physical to sail in every single aspect. You might see a slightly larger Alex Thomson by the start of the Vendée Globe!
You just have to get on with the solo stuff…...when you have someone here, a lot of the time the other person is asleep so really you are sailing the boat solo. One of the greatest things for us is to complete and finish this race and it will be the longest time I would have spent at sea for any length of time, despite the stop in Wellington...and it is essential to get your head right and remember it is a marathon and not a sprint that has been the learning for me.
I think in my nature, when I started this a number of years ago, I always felt that it was a sprint not a marathon and every single "point zero decimal place" of a knot mattered, (which it does) but it's also important to remember the bigger picture, to remember that you have to keep yourself fit and look after the boat. As I’ve got older maybe I have more sense of responsibility and I am learning that particularly with these boats. In my last boat you could sail it hard in 35 knots of wind – we have maybe been over that once but to be honest on this boat, it’s not a pleasant experience...you have to be able to throttle back even more and choose the time when to push.
Jean Pierre's nightmares must be the result of the pressure of being in front! I did have some strange dreams early on but not so much anymore...both of us are sleeping better than we ever have done. In fact when I got up a couple of hours ago I said it was the best sleep I have had in the whole race! We're not really under pressure, we feel good and we're well rested. Wellington wasn’t really a sleeping stop for us, we struggled to sleep there and neither of us slept for more than 4 hours on shore but as soon as back on the boat we started to sleep quite well...We were prepared for the Southern Ocean and everything it was to give us and it hasn’t given us any of it!!…we've had a lot of r and r in this part of the southern ocean...and as we are sailing upwind the pilot is able to do better than us at long stretches so we'll continue to keep rested and ready for when we have to give our all."
Shaky but rested, says Jean Pierre Dick...
We are moving around quite a lot out here, with very choppy seas. We are in a southern flux and the depression is going to follow us until we reach Cape Horn and even afterwards. Our ETA for Cape Horn is for Wednesday night or Thursday. Everything is going well on board even if it is a real shaker inside Paprec Virbac 2. We are doing longer shifts so that we can rest more. The bunk bed is quite exceptional and even better with a sleeping bag – very comfortable and stable! At night I dream about the sailing conditions, but in quite a bizarre way! I have nightmares that the wind suddenly changes direction or that we need to make a sail change, but when I wake up everything is normal again and that is reassuring!
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