Transat Jacques Vabre - Day 7
by Transat Jacques Vabre 2013 13 Nov 2013 11:01 GMT
13 November 2013
Schuss south
All of the Transat Jacques Vabre fleet are enjoying the influence of the Azores high pressure which is producing good conditions all the way from just north of Cape Finisterre where the winds are NE'ly all the way to the approaches to the Cape Verde islands. Pleasingly strong, it holds all the way to the northern fringe of the Doldrums which the MOD70's are preparing to cross on Wednesday.
With the exception of 11th Hour Racing, the British-American duo of Hannah Jenner and Rob Windsor) which restarted from Lorient just after midnight after repairing their forestay and EcoElec (Darni-Bernard) which is not at the same pace as the other Class 40s all of the fleet are out of Biscay now and in good winds, between 15 and 30kts. In fact the leading Class 40's – led by GDF SUEZ (Rogues - Delahaye) and Mare (Riechers - Brasseur) make over thirteen knots off Portugal, the IMOCA Open 60's make than sixteen nodes in the West Madeira, the Multi 50s are at over twenty knots across the Canaries and the MOD -70s are sailing at close to thirty knots at the latitude of the Cape Verde islands.
At their current speeds the two MOD70s will cross the equator in one week which for a 70 feet trimaran with only two on board compares favourably with a reference time set in 2005 by Orange II in 2005, a 36 metre (120 feet) catamaran sailed by 14 men. And the two, Edmond de Rothschild (Josse- Caudrelier) and Musandam Oman Air (Gavignet - Foxall) have already passed the mid-point (2 700 miles) last night off the Cape Verde islands.
The islands group saw the two MOD -70 make two gybes to move more to the West to enter the Doldrums this Wedsday afternoon at around 30 ° West. The Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) band appears to begin at 9 ° North and ends at about 4 ° North and so is more than 300 miles wide.
Gusts and shifts
In the Multi50s FenêtréA Cardinal (Le Roux - Elies) still leads the four boat fleet by a good margin of just over one hundred miles on Actual (Le Blévec – De Pavant) but the wind was not very stable last night, the leaders were under clouds at times, close to the Canary Islands. This irregular, changeable breeze makes the nights quite tricky because the half moon gives little light. The waves are not well organized, the gusts alternate with lulls and you have to be on deck the whole time, adjusting the sails and the autopilot or steering..
As for the IMOCA Open 60 monohulls now led by Cheminées Poujoulat (Stamm - Legros) passing off Madeira during the night prompted MACIF (Gabart - Desjoyeaux) to gybe twice while PRB (Riou- Le Cam) didn't and lost ground in the wind shadow of the islands. However, the two most westerly boats, Safran (Guillemot-Bidégorry) and Maitre CoQ (Beyou - Pratt) did not benefited from their routing more to the west last night.
The trade winds are not that easy to sail in but they are there for 1200 miles before hitting the Doldrums, and so if the course currently resembles a long southerly schuss, there are still plenty of bumps and lumps on the track.
Quotes:
Cheminées Poujoulat, IMOCA Open 60, Philippe Legros:
"I've seen the rankings and we are happy. Given the speed of everyone else I am not sure we have any advantage particularly. We are ahead in terms of the distance to the finish line but the rankings ignore the fact Maitre CoQ and Safran are in the west. We have won a bit compared with PRB and MACIF who passed too close to the wind shadow of Madeira.
The wind shifts 30-40 degrees and rises and falls between 12 and 20kts and so it is not pleasant at all. You either have too much sail or not enough. So we are always monitoring the pilot and power up or depower.
The trade winds are a little less established now, more gusts, more shifts. And the routing is not so clear, I am not sure it is as the computer tells us.
The rankings are good for morale, we learn that we are first from mails from our teams and mates. But we don't really place a great store in the rankings right now, it does not reflect the real position of the boats.
And all is good with the boat, there is nothing needing fixed. And the temperatures are good now, unlike for you there!"
Fabien Delahaye, Classs 40, GDF SUEZ:
"The wind and sea are big and so the sailplan is for that. We had planned the stop ever since we came out of Roscoff because we were compromised without the wind vanes. We looked at the weather and had to pick the right place to do it to lose nothing compared to the others. In 45 minutes it was done and we were still in front. It was a pleasure to start first from Roscoff.
We are not so sure where MARE is but they are going fast too, but it is good to have a boat keep you under pressure, but then we know they are there and still do our own race.
We saw up to 38kts of wind, the average between 28 and 32kts and made the record speed for the boat at 24kts. It's pitch black so it is not easy."
Sebastien Josse, MOD70, Edmond de Rothschild:
"We are approaching the Doldrums with about 200 miles to cover. It is fast when you see the miles we have covered, it is pretty good. We gybed to position ourselves for the Doldrums. The miles pass at great speeds, always quicker than 25kts, which means we have to stay vigilant.
We will refine the ETA at the finish in 24-48 hours, we said before the start we reckoned on 14 days and I think that'll be pretty much right. We should be at the Doldrums today, maybe in 10 hours. And hopefully we will get out quickly.
FenêtréA Cardinal - Erwan Leroux:
"For an hour we have been struggling with shifts and gusts. There are a lot of clouds and the wind moves in all directions under them. It is not easy. We have looked at the rankings and are pleased not to have lost too much because its been a while under these clouds.
It is fun to steer making 28kts under gennaker"
And from Miranda Merron on Class 40 Campagne de France:
"From no wind to plenty of it. The ominous dark grey cloud mass on the horizon yesterday afternoon was indeed a cold front, and wind speed went from 4 knots to 30 knots in seconds. Always quite exciting to reduce sail in those circumstances. Ever since then, Campagne de France has been flying down large black waves (yes, it's dark again), gusts to 35 knots."
www.transat-jacques-vabre.com/en
Big decisions onboard Oman Air-Musandam as Transat Jacques Vabre duo approaches the Doldrums (from Oman Sail)
As Sidney Gavignet, Oman Air-Musandam's French skipper and Damian Foxall, his co skipper from Ireland, reach the Doldrums and the halfway mark of this epic 5,450nm race after just six days at sea; they face some big decisions.
Sitting just 70nm behind the other MOD70, Edmond de Rothschild, the pair is dedicated to maintaining boat speed and making up the distance. They are taking turns on the helm to keep the boat 'flying' as Sidney describes: "We don't have capsize concerns at the moment, nor much adrenaline, the current conditions mean we are completely engaged in the pursuit of speed, we need to keep the boat flying at all times and to keep the centre hull out of the water to reduce drag and increase speed. It takes a lot of concentration," he described via an email sent overnight.
When we spoke to Damian Foxall at dawn, the boat speed was high at 25 knots in 20-25 knots of wind and the pair had 200nm to go until the Doldrums.
"We have beautiful conditions out here, we are in a bit less wind than our rivals, but we decided to gybe a bit earlier than Edmond de Rothschild to reduce the gap so our options approaching the Equator are a bit different to theirs.
"For the last couple of days we have had perfect conditions for these boats, we are flying along!" said Damian.
With some big decisions ahead on the passage through the high pressure convergence zone, shore-based router Jeff Cuzon is supporting them with the strategy, but right now, as Damian points out the plan is to go as fast as possible and get as much rest as possible.
"The next phase is never easy, Jeff is supporting us with the right passage through, but it can be very tricky.
"We decided to make the approach to the Doldrums further east than Sebastien Josse and Charles Caudrelier and gybed accordingly. Within the next 36 to 48 hours, we will know whether that has paid off.
"The race is far from finished, there are still three or four major phases remaining where anything can happen. We are focussed and determined. Plus there is still plenty of Nutella left to keep us going!"
Oman Air-Musandam will sail out of the trade winds later today and the wind speed will drop significantly as the Sultanate of Oman's flagship campaign approaches the Doldrums and the challenges that the 300nm-wide high-pressure convergence zone guarantees!
Next update from the boat, on Friday.
Head to head in the Doldrums (from Edmond de Rothschild)
At the front of the Transat Jacques Vabre fleet, the trial of strength that the two 70' trimarans have been involved in since leaving Le Havre some six days ago, will be stepped up a gear over the coming hours. Leading the way since the start of the race, Edmond de Rothschild boasted a 78-mile (150km) lead over Oman Air-Musandam this Wednesday at 1430 GMT. As a result Sébastien Josse and Charles Caudrelier will be the first to enter the tricky Doldrums region, which is situated above the equator, whilst Sidney Gavignet and Damian Foxall have opted to position themselves 100 miles (180km) to the East of their rival.
In this so-called inter-tropical convergence zone, both the navigational instruments and the sailors are unable to make head or tail of the situation. Indeed, when the tradewinds of the northern hemisphere meet their counterparts from the south, they cancel each other out leaving a rather unpredictable zone in their wake. In a humid heat, the sailors attempt to make headway between the violent squalls and what becomes a 'crazy' wind beneath the massive cumulonimbus. Of varying width and in more or less of a northerly position, the Doldrums are a nightmare for strategists. Solely satellite images give some insight into the density of the cloud and the general activity in the zone. In this way, despite all the digital tools at their disposal, the navigators initially focus on what they can see around them in order to extract themselves from the area as quickly as possible.
Theoretically well placed
There are a few rules for tackling the problem in the right manner however. To start with, the first to enter the Doldrums is often the first to come out the other side. Edmond de Rothschild already holds this particular card. After that, ordinarily the unstable zone is narrower to the west than in the east, near the African coast, which is the case right now. Here too, Sébastien Josse and Charles Caudrelier appear to be well placed. "Even though we're entering a very random period of the race, we prefer to position the trimaran Edmond de Rothschild between our rival and the western side of the race zone," Antoine Koch, the router of the boat fitted out by Baron Benjamin de Rothschild confirms at midday.
Not simple for all that
Nevertheless, with this particular Doldrums spanning nearly 300 miles in width, as well as being rather active and very far north (from 8 degrees north), it's likely to be a complicated task. "We put in a gybe as a preventative measure to line ourselves up," Sébastien Josse stated at this morning's Transat Jacques Vabre radio session. "We should make it into the Doldrums over the course of today and we'll have to wait and see when we'll come out the other side, but we hope it will be fairly soon! Sometimes it goes without a hitch and other times there's a squall which blocks your progress for hours on end."
Sailing beneath the clouds enables progress to be made towards the exit, even though the wind can go from 5 to 25 knots in a matter of minutes. As such the crews will have the afternoon to familiarise themselves with the situation, but the 'cloud-hopping' section will largely be played out by night. "It won't be easy," the router continues: "The very big cloud masses will show up on the radar, but it's on deck that the sailors will get the best handle on the situation. We'll have to deal with every eventuality as it arises."
A just-in-time policy
After the first three days of racing in a tough weather system, then the three following days at high speed in the trades, the Edmond de Rothschild duo are keeping control of this thrilling hand-to-hand battle with Oman Air-Musandam.
However, at the midway point in the race, the boats remain very close to one another and a fresh trial is beginning. Indeed, each crew is having to leave part of its fate in the unpredictable hands of the 'Doldrums'. This will come as added weight on the shoulders of these sailors, who will be constantly wondering whether the other boat is fairing better than them.
Fortunately Sébastien and Charles are attacking this tricky phase in fine fettle. The stability of the wind conditions over the past few days has enabled the duo to adhere to regular watches and allow themselves several two-hour stretches of sleep in a row... Suffice to say that this is the height of the luxury!
Team 11th Hour Racing is Back on the Race Course! (from Team 11th Hour Racing)
Vowing never to give up, Hannah Jenner & Rob Windsor are back on the TJV course after an unscheduled pit stop in Lorient to repair a broken forestay
At 21:54:35 Europe Standard Time (20:54:35 GMT, 15:54:35 Eastern Standard Time) Team 11th Hour rejoined the Transat Jacques Vabre after making an unscheduled pit stop in Lorient, France to repair a failed strop on their forestay. On land for just four hours, Team 11th Hour is now in pursuit of the rest of the fleet en route to Itajai, Brazil. Below is the first hand account of the breakage from Hannah Jenner and an update shortly after rejoining the race from Rob Windsor.
Hannah Jenner recounts the forestay breakage:
"We had had a reasonable night sailing upwind into a breeze of 15-20 knots. Pretty much since Ushant we had been bouncing around in the residual sea state left by the storm that held us up in Roscoff. The boat felt good as she usually does on this point of sail. We were flying the solent with one reef in the main, fully stacked and ballasted aiming at Finisterre and inching closer to our downwind expressway to the sunshine. But at 0945 UTC not long after I had come on watch there was that dreaded loud bang. I have lost the rig on this boat before and although this bang was way more timid than the sound of the rig snapping, it was still unpleasant. As I turned to look towards the foredeck I watched the solent sail allong with the forestay drop from the sky and come to rest a couple of feet under the water. I had seen this before but at least this tiime the rig was still standing. Before I had even finished calling his name Rob was on deck. We dropped the mainsail immediately and stood back to try to take in what had just happened.
Of course initially we felt a sense of relief that the mast was still upright but as we set to work to retrieve the sail from the water and stabalize the mast the sinking feeling of months of hard work gone right before your eyes swamped us and we woked on in silence. After assesing what we could by way of sighting the rig with binoculars we determined that if we could get to Lorient we may just be able to turn this around and get back into the race assuming that it is just a broken forestay strop. Thankfully we have an amazing team and network of friends and supporters so with communications flying back and forth between England, France and the USA we should have the parts we need waiting for us on the dock when we get in.
But there in itself lies a problem. We are running an environmentally concious campaign and had not planned on using any diesel fuel besides what is required to get on and off the dock. We left with 40 litres in our fuel tank and a back up 20 litres in a gerry can just incase we had hydrgenerator problems and no sunshine to fuel the solar panels. When the forestay broke we were 150 miles away from Lorient. Now in a car that would take us 2 hours, but out here we were looking at many more. We motored slowly all day, but fuel supplies got low, too low for us to be able to make it into port. Of course it was pitch black outside, but with a few alterations to our set up we hoisted the staysail and thankfully the one thing in our favor was that the breeze was coming from behind.
We are beyond gutted that while we sailed northeast the rest of the fleet head southwest. To get to the start of a TJV takes a monumental effort but we have not quit yet!! We are doing everythng we can to fix this situation and get back out on the race course. Maybe we can't win anymore but stranger things have happened at sea. Rest assured we will never give up."
Rob Windsor checks in shortly after leaving Lorient and rejoining the race:
"After our forestay detached from our rig, we spent the better part of 30 hours getting to Lorient to try and fix the problem. When we arrived in Lorient we found three people waiting for us on the dock: Ryan Breymeier, a good friend and fellow American short-handed sailor, Yann Le Bretton, prepareteur who we met in Charleston this year at the Atlantic Cup and Yann's girlfriend who's name I didn't catch. As soon as we got to the dock they hopped on board. Ryan had a dock cart full of bits to sort out all of our trouble; a mast jack to jack up the rig so we could fix the forestay problem, vacuum bag material to fix our leaky rudder post, and a bunch of rigging bits to put it all together. On top of all of that they brought 2 large pizzas.
It's pretty awesome to be in another country, in a harbor you have never been in, pull in with a broken boat (and broken Rob but we will get to that in a minute), see two faces you know smiling at you telling it will all be OK and pull off the dock just 4 hours later with it all fixed. Ryan asked if I was OK because Hannah mentioned that I had hurt myself. So, sometimes I over do it. People that know me will laugh at that because maybe it's more than sometimes. Anyway, I think I pulled something too hard and both my forearms were swollen and really painful. Anytime I pulled or grabbed something I was in a lot of pain and of course sailing is all about pulling and grabbing so nedless to say, I was suffering. Ryan told me he had spoken to a doctor at the hospital and that I could go to the Emerrgency Room and walk right in. He said there would be no wait and that the doctor would sort me out. I ws thinking no way. I was just in a hospital in France 2 weeks ago getting stitches in my finger and it took 4 hours for 3 stitches. Yann's giirlfriend took me to the hospital, we walked in and the doctor took me in in less than a minute! They took some blood and spoke a lot of French words I didn't understnd and told me I pulled tthe tendons in my hands and forearms. They gave me some pills and cream and a splint for one arm and we were out the door in an hour.
When I got back to the boat, all the work was done. All the tools were being put away and they were tossing us our lines. As I write this, I am smiling from ear to ear. We have worked so hard to get here. We will never give up. As of now we are back on the race course, going down wind at about 14 knots! With the help of some friends and some good sailing from us, we will be right bck in this race very soon. Thanks to everyone for your support."