The pace is every bit as sustained as it was before for all twelve multihulls. Karine Fauconnier (Sergio Tacchini) is leading and the first boats have sailed at an average speed of fifteen knots since the start - in spite of the succession of calm spells throughout the sail down the river, ditto in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and in the Cabot Strait. One minute at 25 knots and the next at 3 knots, the crews have had to keep a permanent lookout to make sure they stayed with the wind as at when it blew. Complex, but typical conditions for these waters. Karine Fauconnier has done an excellent job indeed as she has managed to take a twelve mile lead over the tightly-packed group of followers behind her Sergio Tacchini. But the gaps are never the less wholly insignificant in the context of the start of an Atlantic crossing : 2 000 miles to be covered at a pace which shows no signs of letting up. At last the options will start to become clearer as the trimarans will have to climb north to around 50° to glide over the high pressure system which is currently covering the whole of the ocean . Thereafter, it will be a question of lining up one gybe after another in keeping with the wind shifts.
Gitana 11
is still on the right lines keeping up with the seven other trimarans, as the two Italian boats have made bit of a break away. Karine Fauconnier (Sergio Tacchini) and Giovanni Soldini (TIM-Progetto Italia) are the first to have managed to pull away from
The weather is not that stable and the multi fleet sailed past the
Live from Gitana X
« "The door is closed"! said Luc Poupon, navigator of Gitana X. Roughly translated, what he means by that is that the winds have calmed, almost into insignificance and that things should remain that way until we have passed Saint-Pierre, which is where we reckon we'll be tomorrow [Wednesday] morning. So after a run at more than 25 knots, early this (Tuesday) morning and another after
Of course, we very much welcome this general grouping of the fleet a hundred miles from the archipelago. I don't doubt for a moment that the atmosphere on board the other boats is anything but excellent – but speaking for ourselves, it's tip-top ». Marco has put his cap on sideways, a dead giveaway that everything is A1-OK with him. Olivier Wroczynski, his official performer has his eyes fixed well beyond the horizon, keeping his eyes peeled, scanning the skies for the slightest sign of a cyclogenesis (low pressure system on a spatial scale).
Another source of satisfaction - warmth ! All right, not much to write home about, but reckon that we can never the less describe this as exceptionally warm for this part of the world. On our outward delivery passage to Québec, in these same waters we had our head gear on together with three layers of fleece clothing under our oilskins, in conditions of 100% humidity. Today we are barefoot, in lightweight clothing and have just one layer of fleece on. We're clambering about up on deck to hoist the Code 0 or unroll the