29 January 2008
Day 80: Challenging conditions in the Atlantic Ocean
If the crews of the Barcelona World Race thought they'd left the tough times behind them when the rounded Cape Horn, they've been sadly mistaken. Although storm force winds aren't the problem here, light, upwind conditions are making for slow progress home.
The race leader, Paprec-Virbac 2, has struggled to manage a 200-mile day for what must seem like an eternity to skippers Jean-Pierre Dick and Damian Foxall. But they're not alone. On today's 14:00 GMT position report, only Hugo Boss and Educación sin Fronteras were able to break that modest goal as both made good 254 miles over the past 24 hours. These are tough conditions for offshore racing sailors.
"I think that these are the worst 24 hours I've experienced since the start," wrote Michèle Paret from Temenos II last night. "The wind was coming from every direction and we found ourselves upwind and then downwind. It was just surreal. We were manoeuvring 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 or 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 the cloud to catch up with us so as we could get going again."
The end result of the slow conditions is two duels within the larger race that still must be played out. The closer battle is for third place where Temenos II and Mutua Madrileña continue their dance for a podium position. The advantage seems to lie with first one boat and then the other. Over the past 24 hours it's Temenos II which has eked out a further 15 miles ahead to lead by 60 miles.
At the head of the fleet, Paprec-Virbac 2 continues to slog away towards home. It's a battle upwind in light conditions for the race leader, who, despite sailing at 10-12 knots for most of the last day have only been able to creep 169 miles closer to the finishing line. Hugo Boss has gained another 85 miles, but skipper Alex Thomson says that has to be taken with a grain of salt.
"It's a bit debatable as to whether we've caught up any miles. In terms of distance to finish, yes we have," Alex explained. "But they are actually about 75 miles north of us. So in distance to the finish we have, but we pretty much have to follow their track so we are probably still 750 miles behind them in reality."
But he went on to say the longer term forecast might just provide an opening if the high pressure parked in the Atlantic which is slowing Paprec-Virbac 2 moves off as some models show, "that could be beneficial to us," Alex continued.
On Educación sin Fronteras, skipper Albert Bargués reported that conditions were stable and good: "We're making 11 knots constantly, on the direct route, following the high, good sailing conditions," he said. "We're making good speed, we are both happy."
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Day 80 - January 29, 14:00 GMT - Position report with distance to leader
1. PAPREC-VIRBAC 2 - Jean Pierre DICK / Damian FOXALL - 2491 to finish
2. HUGO BOSS - Alex THOMSON / Andrew CAPE - 463
3. TEMENOS 2 - Dominique Wavre / Michele PARET- 1628
4. MUTUA MADRILENA - Javier SANSO / Pachi RIVERO - 1688
5. EDUCACION SIN FRONTERAS - Servane ESCOFFIER / Albert BARGUES - 2847
Abandoned - VEOLIA ENVIRONNEMENT - Roland JOURDAIN / Jean Luc NELIAS
Abandoned - ESTRELLA DAMM - Guillermo ALTADILL / JONATHAN MCKEE
Abandoned - DELTA DORE - Jérémie BEYOU / Sidney GAVIGNET
Abandoned - PRB - Vincent Riou / Sebastien JOSSE
In Quotes - Alex Thomson, Hugo Boss: "This race has been unusually slow weather-wise and the Vendee Globe in 2004 was unusually fast weather wise. We're constantly comparing to that, and that's where we got 90 days from but i guess it was pretty fast. It's hard to make those comparisons. To date, we have not put the third reef in, and we haven't had to use our staysail upwind yet. We haven't sailed upwind in more than 25 knots, and our maximum wind speed is 49 or 50 knots and that was a week ago. It's been a very odd race, conditions wise."
See the multimedia section at www.barcelonaworldrace.org for all the latest photos, videos and audio clips from the race course.
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Lou Newlands
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