28 January 2008
Surreal!
Once the finish line is crossed, the memories certainly won’t be lacking in the
minds of the skippers in the Barcelona World Race. Already though it would seem
that for Michèle and Dominique, the past 24 hours have meant that they are on
the point of receiving the unenviable prize for worst day in the race. In
contrast to the perception we may have on land, for the sailors there is nothing
more laborious than a lack of wind.
Yesterday, to the detriment of their sleep, the two co-skippers were already
being forced to make a series of manœuvres at a virtually military pace, but at
least they had the satisfaction of knowing they were making headway. Very
quickly though, the small salutary puffs of wind vanished, abandoning Temenos II
to a very strong swell, braking their progress as well as knocking the boat
about violently. A prisoner in a zone of calms off Brazil, the crew were
thrashed about, all their efforts in vain until the morning. Since then though,
the monohull has been making headway at a reasonable pace once again, Temenos II
managing to make around ten knots of boat speed upwind, hoping that the high
pressure to come will prove to be a little gentler on the crew.
Contacted late today Michèle had this to say: “The wind completely died on
several occasions and we were stuck fast without even a sniff of air. There was
a 2 metre swell and we couldn't work out where on earth it had come from. It was
very violent, the boat slamming every which way, to the extent that I felt bad
for it. With each wave, the mast vibrated; the indexsail flogging from one side
to the other.
In this situation you can't block the boom off completely
otherwise you don't make any headway as the sails simply flop across to the
other side. I think that these are the worst 24 hours I've experienced since the
start. The wind was coming from every direction and we found ourselves upwind
and then downwind. It was changing the whole time, it was just surreal. We were
manœuvring constantly and changing sails. It was a very thankless task
struggling to get the boat making headway without any result. We stayed with the
same cloud, which blocked our way for several hours in a row. It would send us a
few little puffs of air so we could start moving very gently at 5, 6 knots, but
as soon as we escaped its influence the boat would stop dead in its tracks as if
it had hit a wall. We had to wait for it to catch up with us so as we could get
going again. This all took time though as it couldn't have been moving at more
than 2 knots. There was certainly enough in all that to lose your cool! We
haven't stopped. We haven't slept a single minute. The nights are really very
black. We were watching for the arrival of clouds on the radar. You see if they
are moving quickly or not, but that doesn't really give you any notion of how
much wind there is below them. Since this morning the wind has established
itself to the North and we're managing to stay on course, heading upwind with an
average of just ten knots of boat speed. It feels good even though we know we'll
have more high pressure to negotiate before we stand a chance of hitting the
tradewinds.”
Kate Jennings
Expression.
P.O. Box 26,
Dartmouth,
DEVON.
TQ6 0YG
United Kingdom
+44 (0)7795 116699
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