Les trimarans sont partis du Havre après 67 heures de neutralisation

Photo : G.Martin-Raget

It was a magnificent sight as all 14 multihulls opened their wings and took off at a rate of 18 knots towards the turning mark, a North cardinal 3 miles from the start line. Bayer rapidly overtook Foncia, and a few minutes later Groupama charged in the lead, gybing first around the Metzinger cardinal mark, followed swiftly by Biscuits La Trinitaine, Belgacom, Géant, Bayer, Banque Populaire, Sergio Tacchini, Banque Covefi… The gybing manoeuvres at such closes quarters were fairly heart-stopping ! When the fleet headed offshore the brakes came off and boat speeds lifted to around 24 knots. At 1017hrs French time, Groupama had turned around the final mark of the course, followed by Biscuits La Trinitaine, Bayer, Belgacom, Géant, Sergio Tacchini, Banque Populaire, Banque Covefi, Tim, Sopra Group, Bonduelle, Sodebo, Gitana and finally Foncia.

Banque Covéfi flirte avec un cargo

Photo : G.Martin-Raget

They are heading towards Barfleur 57m away, then Cap Hague 22m further down the coast. They are expected to enter the Atlantic tonight - last time round Belgacom took no more than 11 hours to reach the mouth of the English Channel ! At the latest positions from 1500hrs GMT, some of the big names were up at the front : Géant (Desjoyeaux/Jan) had taken the lead 2 miles ahead of Belgian multihull Belgacom (Nélias/L. Peyron), followed by Italian trimaran TIM (Soldini/Malingri) a further 6.3 miles from the leader. Top speeds are 27 knots from Desjoyeaux/Jan giants and there is only a 30 mile split from first to last boat. Banque Covefi (S & Y Ravussin) have had to make a pit stop to repair a damaged mast track at around 1500hrs French time today.

MULTIHULL OPEN 50

The 50ft multihull Mollymawk skippered by British duo Ross Hobson and Andi Newman have re-entered the race ! After hitting a UFO off Ushant on Monday, the trimaran limped to Plymouth, and Ross announced on the satellite phone that they were abandoning the race. However, as they had not even had the opportunity to send through an official declaration of their abandon, once they reached port, they soon realized that they might be able to repair and restart before the 60ft multihull start today. The jury finally gave their authorization for the team to re-enter the race and Ross and Andi were able to restart over night. They are currently 4163 miles from Brazil, rounding Ushant.

MONOHULL OPEN 60’s

Racing 200 plus miles off the Portugese coast to the west of the rhumb line, the 14 Open 60 monohulls on course are positioning themselves for the favourable NW winds a bit further down the track and the skippers can’t wait to change their scenery from relentless wet boat-bashing upwind conditions to fast downwind flying. This morning the fleet came through the last of the bad weather as a strong low pressure system gripped them for several hours overnight, throwing 40 - 50 knots of headwinds at them and rough seas. Even in survival mode, leader Ecover (Golding/Thompson) managed impressive average hourly boat speeds of around 13 knots in 38 knots of wind.

This afternoon the fleet were given a respite with 10 - 15 knots of westerly breeze which enabled them to dig south again. The new Farr design Virbac came dangerously close to Ecover yesterday, but this seemed to motivate the Brits to find more power from their brand new Owen-Clarke steed and have since pulled ahead by 9 miles in their game of cat and mouse. Golding, however is looking in his rear mirror : "We’re more concerned with the spread and position of the boats behind now as we will begin to get different weather amongst us. We are crossing a high pressure ridge today, which will lead us to westerly winds, and it’s more a question of who will suffer the worst crossing this ridge. The next system is coming across rapidly again and so you never know what will happen."

Another pair who are living on this philosophy are Anglo French duo Roland Jourdain and Alex Thomson on Open 60 Sill, who suffered badly way out west of the fleet in the teeth of the storm this morning, seeing 62 knots in the foredeck, with curtains of water submerging the boat for hours. They lost a good 30 miles to the race leaders but are holding their own against near rivals PRB (Riou/Beyou), Team Cowes (Moloney/Davies) and Cheminées Poujoulat/Armor Lux (Stamm/Lebas). Talking this afternoon in the aftermath on the satellite phone, Thomson stayed optimistic on their position : "By this evening the wind should veer to the south and rise to 30 knots so we’re hoping the boats in the South will suffer more tonight as they approach a small developing low system and that we’ll get into the new North Westerly breeze first and put the foot on the pedal !"

MONOHULL OPEN 50’s

Conrad Humphreys and Paul Larsen on Hellomoto were matching the race leader mile by mile and positioning themselves more in the west to avoid the worst of the rough seas off Cape Finisterre, but have dropped to 30 miles behind Open 50 Storagetek (Guillemot/Salnelle) due to the failure of both autopilot systems. Conrad expressed some concern : "For two, independent systems to fail so soon is almost unbelievable. We’ll have another go at fixing them after this storm but if we can’t, Paul and I are likely to end up hand-steering 24 hours a day."

WEATHER FORECAST

Today - Wednesday : The monohulls have hit the low pressure system which is crossing 25 degrees West and 40 degrees North. Thirty to 40 knot winds will persist throughout the day from the SSW and then shifting to the SW in the evening. The wave height is estimated at 8 - 10 metres. The two leaders have sailed a flawless race so far across the Bay of Biscay and gained from their Southerly option, and are now firmly controlling the rest of the fleet positioned between them and the finish line.   For the multihulls, their start kicked off with 20 knots from the SSE, fluctuating from the land. Off the coast this afternoon the wind from the SSE should freshen to 20 - 30 knots, but the sea is smooth.

Thursday : Monohulls : the weather will still be rough, 30 - 40 knots from the South West as the cold front passes rapidly over the fleet, then in the afternoon the winds should shift to from SW to NW at 20 - 30 knots, with the conditions only easing off by the end of the night for the leading boats. The multihulls first full day will be the worst in the race, with Southerly winds up to 30 - 40 knots and a built up sea with 8 - 10 metre waves.

Friday : The monohulls will be sailing in North Westerly winds, lifting their boatspeeds as they head directly towards the trade winds. The multihulls will have the same difficult conditions as yesterday, with 30 - 40 knots of breeze from the South West during the morning. Depending on their speeds, in the afternoon, the leaders should reach a 20 - 30 knot WNW wind allowing them to head directly South. They are unlikely to catch up on the monohull fleet for another 3 days.

• POSITIONS at 14:45 hrs GMT 05/11/03
 Open 60s’ map : http://voile.esrifrance.fr/default_...

MULTIHULL OPEN 60
 Pos. / Boat / Name / Latitude / Longitude / Speed / Hdg / DTF / DFL
 1 GEANT 49 07.56’ N 2 56.96’ W 22.1 226 4208.8m
 2 BELGACOM 49 09.08’ N 2 54.56’ W 25.1 227 4210.8m 2.0m
 3 TIM 49 19.48’ N 2 37.20’ W 21.7 226 4215.1m 6.3m
 4 GROUPAMA 49 12.16’ N 2 47.52’ W 21.9 225 4216.4m 7.5m

MONOHULL OPEN 60
 Pos. / Boat / Name / Latitude / Longitude / Speed / Hdg / DTF / DFL
 1 ECOVER 40 12.96’ N 15 11.52’ W 6.9 185 3474.3m
 2 VIRBAC 40 13.98’ N 14 21.06’ W 12.2 184 3483.4m 9.1m
 3 SILL 41 40.80’ N 15 40.20’ W 8.3 204 3541.5m 67.1m
 4 PRB 41 13.16’ N 13 54.04’ W 8.2 188 3554m 79.6m
 5 TEAM COWES 41 43.40’ N 12 51.88’ W 10.8 211 3599.3m 125m

OPEN 50 MULTIHULL
 1 MOLLYMAWK 48 39.72’ N 5 26.20’ W 8.1 225 4163.8m

OPEN 50 MONOHULLS 
 1 STORAGETEK 43 43.16’ N 9 18.16’ W 7.8 244 3782.5m
 2 HELLOMOTO 44 34.24’ N 9 58.08’ W 4.6 263 3812.5m 30m

 Mike Golding (Ecover) : "What’s been interesting is the rise of Virbac, we watched her from way back when she was a couple of places behind and she gained in the Bay of Biscay so much, it was impressive to watch. This is something Jean-Pierre has done in other races and we were pretty concerned at how close she was getting. We had to look hard at how we were sailing as this is a new boat too, and it pushed us into a situation where we had to find more speed, which we did, and even pulled out a little more, a strange incident for us."

 Alex Thomson (Sill) : "We had the most horrendous night ever. We tried to stay higher so as not to end up in the really nasty stuff but were in it before we could get out of it, and the wind stayed in the top 50’s for several hours, and reached 62 knots at tops. We got the pounding of our lives and had to slow up the boat, it was just full on. But there haven’t been any breakages, however we did lose about 35 miles in our Westing as we were trying to get west, west, west, but the extreme winds held up progress. I have to say that anyone who knows me, knows I am always up for the worst weather and a bit gung-ho, but last night I had to admit even I didn’t fancy it ! Bilou definitely calms me down with his experience on these boats, and I am learning that it is wise to be a bit conservative at times !"

 Jean-Pierre Dick (Virbac) "There is a huge blow outside and it’s still building. We’re going to get the third reef in the mainsail, there’s 40 knots right now but we expect 50 knots soon. It’s infernal outside, we can hear the wind screaming almost. Right now we’re just existing on board rather than racing, we have to look after the boat. What have we done to deserve these conditions I dread to think !" Conrad Humphreys (Hellomoto) : "We’ve just taken the main down and are back under storm jib. We knew it was coming and prepared well for another pounding. The important thing is the boat - we’ve been pushing hard but now we need to see her safely through this and into those forecast north-westerlies, hopefully sometime tomorrow. Then we’ll be off like a robber’s dog !"

Mary Ambler / TJV