Thursday 6 november 2008
Complicated weather!
With three days to go to the start, most of Marc Guillemot's work now concerns weather preparation, which he will be busy doing right up to the last moment with Sylvain Mondon from Météo France. Each day, the two men draw up an increasingly precise forecast and examine the different situations. The initial conclusions indicate that this Vendée Globe will be complicated from the start, with upwind sailing in strong winds to begin, with gusts up to forty knots forecast, before they hit the uncertainties off Madeira.
«One thing is certain: the race will be on from the start. We'll be setting out ahead of a front, sailing upwind in windy conditions and heavy seas. It's going to be a fight to be up with the frontrunners by Cape Finisterre, as this is vital for what follows!» With three days to go to the start, Marc Guillemot is already completely in the race the start of which looks like being heavy going.
«For the start, the south-westerly wind will average around twenty knots with gusts up to thirty and two metre high waves. And it will only get worse: the average wind strength will increase to thirty knots gusting to forty in the evening with three to four metre high waves. On Monday, we may well see 40 to 42 knots, as a cold front moves in during the night. The seas are going to be heavy with waves up to 4 to 6 metres,» explained Sylvain Mondon. All of that in drizzle or, worse still, rain.
They are going to have their work cut out in the first few days of racing. «Like many others, if I could have chosen, I would have preferred 15 knots downwind,» jokes Marc Guillemot, «but we're all in the same boat, and we're going to have to deal with that. It's not all going to be a question of speed, but rather the ability to get things right from the outset.»
Uncertainty after the strong winds
Once the windy start is out of the way, there is a major area of uncertainty. «From Tuesday, the next section between Cape Finisterre and Madeira looks complicated. The major question in the first few days of the race will be to know if it is possible to reach the trade winds without being held up, in other words making it to the south of the Canaries . We need to come up with a strategy to get through this zone of uncertainties, by trying to imagine how we should tackle it and get across,» explained Sylvain Mondon.
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