Transat Jaques Vabre 2007 von Le Havre nach Bahia - Start 3. November 2007 www.jacques-vabre.com - Übersicht PR No.2 Saturday 3rd November 2007 Start of the Transat Jacques Vabre Conflicting choices The Transat Jacques Vabre got away an hour late this Saturday at 1402 hours local time off Le Havre. Michel Desjoyeaux and Emmanuel Le Borgne are already at the exit to the Baie de Seine however and are in the leading pack amidst seventeen IMOCA monohulls. Forecasts suggest that there will be a smooth exit from the Channel until Monday morning, though the rest of the course towards Salvador de Bahia is shaping up to be very complicated… 4,335 miles lay ahead of the fleet and already there are some dilemmas to be resolved! The weather conditions this All Saints weekend are certainly unusual with a big area of high pressure wedged over the British Isles, but what is already causing problems for the seventeen duos at sea, is a fairly stable depression to the South of the Azores… "We're going to escape the Channel with downwind conditions and around ten knots of N to NE'ly winds as far as Ushant, but that's where we'll meet our first obstacle! We're going to have to quickly choose between hugging the Portuguese coast or distancing ourselves from Cape Finisterre to pass under the Azores… This is something which will have to be decided at the tip of Brittany…" indicated Michel Desjoyeaux just before the start. Breton dilemma According to the weather forecast, the 200 mile exit from the Channel between Le Havre and Ushant should take around half a day whilst the breeze will gradually clock round to the East as it fills in over the Bay of Biscay… The race rhythm will immediately accelerate at the point where a choice will have to be made between those making an Eastern option along the Moroccan coast, and those aiming to pass close to the centre of this depression around the Azores. Of course the other option would be to take a line straight down the middle of these two, with the boats threading their way between the calm conditions forecast around the Canaries and this depression offshore! "Conditions are pretty surprising for November and there is still uncertainty about which is the right option: we don't want the race to turn into a lottery as the African trade winds have been totally disrupted by this Atlantic disturbance and it may take some time to settle back to normal… FONCIA is a monohull which is rather at ease downwind and in the light airs but we're going to have to keep an eye on everyone, even the older generation IMOCA boats like Roxy or Cervin EnR… may surprise us: there won't be any need to overpower the new prototypes." At 1600 hours, Michel Desjoyeaux and Emmanuel Le Borgne were in fourth place in the ranking: "two hours after the start we're approaching the tip of Cotentin… the wind is shifty and is calling for a fair amount of trimming(!). The breeze should fill in rapidly. Tomorrow morning we'll have passed Ushant." The fleet of seventeen IMOCA monohulls were still very bunched and their first night at sea promises to be relatively quiet for the tandems, though they will have to reindex vigilant with the large amount of shipping in the Channel. An outside view of the start All the team from Mer Agitée, who have participated in the FONCIA project alongside Michel Desjoyeaux and Emmanuel Le Borgne, were naturally out on the water to encourage the duo one last time: Jean-Paul Roux, General Manager of Mer Agitée: "It's extremely satisfying for the whole team who have spent the past nine months or so working on this project: FONCIA is the materialisation of an incalculable number of hours of reflexion and realisation. We're now entering race mode itself and we're all going to follow the progress of Michel and Emmanuel up to Bahia on our computers." Marc Liardet, FONCIA's boat captain: "We didn't manage to finish everything we wanted before the start, but we're very satisfied with the preparation: we had set ourselves fairly high goals for optimising the boat and the results are good. This will also be a good lesson for the Vendée Globe…" Dimitri Voisin, head of onboard electronics: "Up until this morning I was still stressed because there was a problem with the transmission of video footage. Everything was sorted out in time though in the end!" Paul Duval, head of safety, the ballast system and the class measurement: "This was the second race start for FONCIA after the SNSM Record, but the imperatives today differ in that this race is double handed and a transatlantic race... I hope our work puts us on a equal footing with the other teams, but we already know that we're going to have some more work to do once Michel returns from Bahia single-handed…" Alain Gautier, a former Team FONCIA racer: "The start was pretty tense for a transatlantic! Marc Guillemot even overshot the line… Michel and Emmanuel got a bit boxed in but they soon managed to free themselves and they were sailing under large gennaker towards Cherbourg. It was surprising to see that the duos were using very different sail configurations. FONCIA looked quick in the light airs." Régine, Michel Desjoyeaux' partner: "I'd certainly never want to do this race! I should get used to it but no... It's great that they left with a smile on their face in these pleasant conditions." ***FONCIA Present in over 500 sites around Europe (France, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany), the FONCIA Group is the leader of property management and transaction for habitation in France. FONCIA's savoir-faire is based around 4 complementary areas of the property market: the management of joint ownership, rental management, rental and sales. Team FONCIA Press Service Agence Blanco Negro 01 47 72 81 41 Stéphanie André Mob : +33 (0)6 84 79 76 01 / Laurence Dacoury Mob : +33 (0)6 18 41 30 28 presse@teamfoncia.com www.teamfoncia.com Copyright © 1996-2016 - SEGEL.DE