Roland Jourdain (Veolia Environnement) must be telling himself that there rare two ways of looking at what is happening as he pursues Michel Desjoyeaux: on the one hand, they are setting the pace and increasing their lead with each rankings, but on the other hand, he must be wondering if this might lead to compromising his own equipment and performance and maybe there is scope to consolidate a little
Jean Le Cam, flying solo now in third place, since he lost his running mate Sébastien Josse, can only work hard in his role as distant spectator.
Annoyed and frustrated, he can see the two frontrunners getting away in a different weather system. While the two leaders are benefiting from strong NW'ly winds enabling them to reach the East pacific Gate, the skipper of VM Matériaux is having to deal with a west to SW'ly wind that is slackening off.
While the Gate being moved northwards from 52° to 44° south initially looks favourable for the two leaders, it could well be different as they sail south east the Horn. A NW'ly wind would force the sailors with the wind from astern to see tactical downwind race. And we all know a gybe that goes wrong can easily lead to broken battens, causing hours of extra work lowering the sail, replacing the battens and hoisting the mainsail again.
Desjoyeaux is 706 miles to the gate, with Roland Jourdain quickest tonight, some 40 miles to the south of Foncia’s track. The latest estimates are for the leaders to round the Horn on 4th or 5th January.
Meantime Marc Guillemot has Safran on song this evening making 16.9 knots in pursuit of Sam Davies who is 470 miles ahead of him. Safran has been third quickest in the fleet between the two polls.
Brian Thompson has will hit the date line at 180 degrees within the next couple of hours where east meets west, and his W’ly longitude starts falling, a much surer reminder that he is on the long homeward half, than passing any theoretically computed and re-computed mid point.
Norbert Sedlacek has still 170 miles to run to pass Cape Leeuwin.
