Throughout the night, Groupama 3 has been making headway in fits and starts in relation to an unstable N'ly breeze, with a succession of tack changes in line with the wind shifts and speeds varying between 19 and 5 knots! Storm squalls have demanded a lot from the crew over this section of the course.

Franck Cammas and his men are beginning to feel the effects of what has been nearly forty days at sea now, without any real break since setting out from Ushant on 31st January: wind, no wind, once again it's been a challenge in itself to make headway to the North, in search of a less tiring steady breeze and most importantly a more productive one. However, for now the wind gods appear to be rather asthmatic and the only solution is to traverse the zone, beating between the puffs of air and avoiding the windless areas...

Electric atmosphere

"The game plan during the course of last night was to position themselves correctly before switching onto port tack, which would take them into a ridge of high pressure in the early hours or later on this Thursday morning. This port tack is set to last throughout today. At 2200 UTC on Wednesday, two thirds of the tricky passage that began on Monday evening was behind them: the beat between the squalls and lulls since Wednesday evening should nevertheless continue until this Thursday evening. The final third of this tricky section involves crossing the ridge of high pressure to the NW of the Saint Helena High, which is scheduled to take place overnight this Thursday.

The passage through the ridge this evening will doubtless involve several tack changes as the wind to the East of the zone is fairly light and certainly won't enable them to extend the tack sufficiently far to traverse it in a single go. On the other side of the ridge of high pressure, the winds are E to NE'ly (Friday), so the upwind conditions are far from over. The real E to SE'ly tradewinds won't come into play until Saturday..." explained Sylvain Mondon from Météo France.

As a result Franck Cammas and his men have spent the night perturbed by some enormous cumulonimbus causing lightning, thunder, Saint Elmo's fire, torrential rain, extended periods of calm and unscheduled gusts of wind. In addition to that the moon was virtually non-existent, making it difficult to carve a way through without falling into an atmospheric trap: as the clock struck midnight the giant trimaran got tangled up in an extended lull... However, by responding to the slightest rotation in the breeze and constantly trimming the sails, the crew of Groupama 3 was able to make a number of tack changes to hunt out the shortest way through and claw back some miles on the reference time. As such the wound has been partly cauterised since they've made up a hundred miles on Orange 2 in the past twenty hours. However, they won't really be able to eat into their deficit until the weekend once Saint Helena is breathing normally again to produce the SE'ly tradewinds.

Translation Kate Jennings

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Last Updated ( Thursday, 11 March 2010 )