Last night’s weather conditions may have been a small improvement on the previous night but for the duo on Mike Golding Yacht Racing, the very early hours of the morning have seen further electrical problems which are continuing to frustrate Mike Golding and co-skipper Javier Sanso.

Winds have dropped slightly from the gusts of over 40 knots yesterday and in the early part of the night, with big seas to nearly seven metres, but Sanso reported this morning that their strategy, tacking yesterday afternoon, seems to be well timed as they are now on a progressively lifted starboard tack and making between 11 and 12 knots.

Being shadowed by Kito de Pavant and Francois Gabart on Groupe Bel, who are fifth to MGYR’s fourth, Golding and his crew are in a strong position within the main northern group.

At a little after 0600hrs GMT this morning Sanso called in:
 “ Right now it is still raining and the wind is down a little bit, we are doing 11-12 knots maximum, the wind has gone right with the shift and so we are pretty much on course. The shift was a pretty nice shift.”

“ We have absolutely no instruments. Pretty much from Night 1 we began to have some problems and from a few hours ago everything completely and utterly screwed up, we are on emergency manual pilot steering which is a pain because we have to go outside to steer the boat.”

“We try to isolate the problem, right now is not the time to start juggling with cables and wires. We will need to fix it when we get a little further south or the weather is a bit better.”

“We are both good, though, coping well with it. We are a little bit tired because keeping watch is a little bit tiring, we have to go in and out the boat a lot, and so the boat is not performing so good with only true wind. With apparent wind you can sail a lot better. Now the routing is pretty much on a straight line. We will get some more wind tomorrow.”

See Transat Jacques Vabre images:

Last Updated ( Thursday, 12 November 2009 )