In the midday radio chat, the skipper, calm as ever, offered us an objective update of the situation:

“I'm trying to keep my spirits up! Even though it's really hard to sail under these conditions. All the weather info for the last 4 days has been off the mark! I can't make head nor tail of it… I don't really know what's in store, so I'm staying on the direct route. But the problem is, this weather could well last until the finish, whereas I'd initially planned to pick up the established trade winds after the transition phase. I'm spending a lot of time making minor adjustments, but the winds are so unstable that I'm getting tired out very quickly. Last night was really hard work because about every 45 minutes, I kept radically changing the weather pattern and therefore the sail configuration due to the large storms that were literally swallowing up the wind. In these conditions, you do a lot of manoeuvring for next to no results! The hardest thing is to see those ahead disappear off without any real hope of catching them … the wind's dying down behind me and in the meantime, they're increasing the gap. I need to watch those behind me in order to contain them, but as they are also more to the south, it's no foregone conclusion. The current scenario is not very encouraging, but when I look at how I started the race, I'm quite satisfied and really enjoying myself on Domaine du Mont d'Arbois.”

Ranking - Wednesday 11 April at 03:00 pm  :