The high pressure zone is starting to make its presence felt, as leader Loick Peyron’s speed drops to just 4.1 knots in this morning’s 1000hrs (GMT) position update, and for the past hour has been heading south-west at 215 degrees. Second-placed Seb Josse is now just 3.7 miles off his tail, and marginally to the east.
As the leaders compress, Mike Golding (GBR) has dropped to ninth place in the rankings, but still within 61 miles of Peyron’s Gitana 80. The biggest gains so far have gone to Jean Le Cam on VM Materiaux, who has jumped from ninth to seventh place this morning, and is heading the highest of any boat at 167.
Further back the compression in the fleet continues as Swiss sailor Bernard Stamm (22nd) has posted the fastest speed over the past hour to close a little on Raphael Dinelli.
But the real place-changing is yet to come. Sylvain Mondon de Météo France revealed this mrning that the differences we are currently seeing in the leaders’ speeds and heading will continue throughout the day as they reach the anticyclone which is blocking their way south-east. The unstable conditions are likely to carry on into the weekend. Currently the only option for those at the front of the fleet is to keep heading south — with the possibility that they will not reaching westerly breezes until they are nearly in the Roaring 40s, and on the same latitude as the Cape of Good Hope! Whether those hunting from behind can find more favourable breezes to make up ground is yet to be seen…
