06.12.2008
Surfing at 26 knots
Cheminées Poujoulat passed through the Atlantic gate yesterday afternoon.
Stamm’s next objective: Roxy, the 60 foot Imoca skippered by Samantha
Davies, was positioned less than 80 miles ahead at 1100 hours this morning.
Yesterday, the latter admitted to a friend on land that Bernard would just
gobble her up in one mouthful…
He is 15th this Saturday 6th December, and over the past week or so Bernard
has been gradually yet determinedly working his way up through the fleet.
Naturally spirits are high. “It’s going very well. At the moment it’s a
little bit complicated because I am in the starting blocks for hoisting more
sail area, but it’s not reasonable to do so yet. In fact I am in full
foulies and boots and all that is down below because we’re between sail
changes. There’s between 11 and 22 knots of wind but right now Cheminées
Poujoulat is surfing at 26 knots! It’s just perfect.”
In fact Bernard called his shore crew this morning to find out the new
destination of the Transat Jacques Vabre. Clearly he’s very pleased about
the prospect of a finish in Costa Rica: “It’s very good. It’ll make a nice
change and as far as the course is concerned, given there’s no Doldrums, I
can only be happy about it. In fact it’s like an extended version of the
Route du Rhum”.
Message from onboard
“For over two days now, I’ve been in a fairly strong NW’ly air flow. At the
start, certain models gave very strong wind of around 50 knots on the files,
but in the end it established itself at around 30/35 knots. Cheminées
Poujoulat is going well. From time to time she does some impressive surfs,
especially when I’m down below. The boat heels over slightly, then she
suddenly picks up speed to over 20 knots. At that point she stays in the
wave for thirty seconds to a minute, in a deafening roar, and then it begins
again shortly afterwards. And if I attack a little bit, my course isn’t as
good, but it stays with the wave. The majority of the time I’m under pilot
and the machine can handle tricky situations without much trouble. She
twists and turns a little but on the whole she’s doing rather well. This is
fortunate given that when you reindex pinned to the helm in these conditions,
you need a deep-sea diver outfit. In addition I leave the windward rudder
down, so that there’s an effective profile if ever the boat begins to
counter heel. All of a sudden it’s not very pleasant at the helm; it’s hard.
At the moment, I spend the night wondering if I should have gybed, though I
was lucky I got to round to the north of this little zone of high pressure
and reduce the distance to go in relation to the others. For the time being
it feels like it’s working but with the current wind angle I can shift over
a little whenever I want. So there you have it. Otherwise it’s the grey, the
cold and the dampness which are reigning and I think we’ve signed up for a
month of these conditions. On the menu today there is the morning cereal,
squid for lunch and pasta with porcini mushrooms this evening.
Translated by Kate Jennings – Expression
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