Three hundred miles to the S.E.E of Salvador de Bahia, Brasil Michel Desjoyeaux us making nearly three knots faster than Roland Jourdain this evening and is probably emerging into the SE’ly trade winds which were predicted to be around 15 degrees South.
He is making 10.7 knots and his lead is at an advantage of 307 miles, getting back towards the 342 miles margin that he had built three days ago. But of that is the case, as he finally extracts Foncia from the ridge of high pressure that has slowed them, then his gains will accelerate rapidly.
Desjoyeaux has not been sitting back. He has had an electrical problem to resolve, not to mention an ongoing issue with his satellite aerial.
“I had to change some elements of one of the battery installations which were weak. I have the advantage that I have them in single units on board. When there’s one faulty one on the four strips of 12 elements, you remove the problem one and you switch it for one that works. When you have batteries cast in one piece, you can’t do that. If there’s a fragile element, your whole battery is up the spout… In this case I was able to reconstitute an entire battery installation by replacing the faulty elements. I must have been drawing on the batteries too much at times, which resulted in my damaging a few elements. For the past two days I’ve just been using the automatic pilot and the navigation instruments. I’m being careful but it’ll hold out till the end of this round the world.” As regards the Fleet (satellite aerial which is used to transfer big computer files via Internet), Michel explains: “I’ve tried everything to repair it… I’ve even reinstalled the system, but there’s nothing that can be done. As such, I’m getting my weather files via Iridium twice a day, which works very well. One area I won’t suffer though is on the satellite (weather) photos as I have a direct receiver.”
“The Rubik’s cube is still in its bag. When I see I’m finding it hard to do Sudoku grids, I leave it to one side… In fact, I’m spending a lot of time on watch ready to react.”
“I haven’t really looked at the
“The jobs’ list has already gone ashore and we’re already beginning to tackle the modifications and improvements to the boat. It’s the shore crew who asked me what work there was to do. They said to me: “we imagine you must have prepared something for us, can you let us know what it is?” As a result I’ve sent them the list of things that need doing…”
Meantime Brian Thompson is making good progress, as is Dee Caffari. The Bahrain Team Skipper has made over 80 miles since he left the eastern tip of the Islane de los Estados, while Caffari is now 50 miles to the SW of the East end of the island, computed to be six miles behind Arnaud Boissières.
