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2008/01/27 - 18h30
It comes and goes...
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| Jules Verne Trophy |
| The weather conditions reigning to the South of the Canaries have not favoured the steady progress of Groupama 3, which has
been wavering between seven and thirty knots according to the squalls and the jumps in the wind. Midway through Sunday afternoon
though, Franck Cammas and his men were still holding onto a lead of over 200 miles on the reference time.
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"Ca s'en va et ça revient..." (It comes and goes"), a song by French singing legend Claude François, perfectly
reflects the end of this weekend off the Canaries! One moment they have air, the next calms, all of which is enveloped in
an atmosphere laden with clouds, which Franck Cammas explains in more detail: "It's not very simple on the water: it
feels like we've been in the Doldrums since yesterday! The squalls enabled us to make headway quickly last night but they
were very fickle with the wind jumping from thirty to three knots with a 60° shift... We're longing for some more established
tradewinds. Here, the skies are very cloudy as we are in the axis of a ridge of high pressure close to a depression. We're
trying to slalom between the squalls."
This stormy zone is the result of a disturbance, which had already
caused the areas of calm prior to the Canary Islands. Groupama 3 will no longer suffer the effects of these once they're past
the latitude of Cape Blanc (Nouadhibou, on the border between Morocco and Mauritania), which is likely to be before sunset
this Sunday. Next on the agenda are the E to NE'ly tradewinds, which fortunately seem to have settled over the zone on a more
permanent basis, even though they're not very powerful at between 15 and 20 knots. The advantage of this wind orientation
will be considerable however, as Franck Cammas and his nine crew will be able to make towards the SW in order to round to
the West of the Cape Verde archipelago.
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Further landforms creating a disturbanceCape Verde, like the Canaries, sprawls out in terms of longitude (180 miles) and latitude (150 miles), with mountains reaching
nearly 2,000 metres on Santo Antao (the island furthest to the NW of the archipelago)! As a result, the wind shadow and the
disturbed breeze extends for tens of miles downwind of the island and Groupama 3 will have to get away to beyond 26° West
in order not to suffer its effects... The giant trimaran's course was particularly revealing through the course of the afternoon,
indicating that the navigator and the skipper were opting to give these volcanic islands a wide berth.
The first
half of Sunday was characterised by a `yoyo-ing' headway, which proved testing both for the nerves and the body. A great number
of manoeuvres were called for to adapt the sail area to the incessant changes in the breeze. However, in a few hours time,
Franck Cammas and his men are likely to see the boatspeed pick up again. The start of the week will also be faster with the
return of the tradewinds, and whilst Groupama 3 still has a 200 miles cushion of a lead over Orange II, it is likely that
this will have increased further still by Tuesday morning...
1,300 miles from the equator, the objective of crossing
into the other hemisphere in less than six days is still a possibility!
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