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2008/01/28 - 18h56
In the kick of the doldrums !
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| Jules Verne Trophy |
| Whilst Groupama 3 was skirting round the island of Santo Antao in the Cape Verdes this Monday lunchtime, the tradewinds had
finally kicked in, bumping up their speed. Franck Cammas and his crew were focussed on heading to the SW prior to diving down
towards the `unmissable' Doldrums. This Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone situated between 5° and 3° North, are not forecast
to be very active, but will still be tricky to negotiate between the calms and squalls.
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Since sunrise, Groupama 3 has found its wings once more. Under gennaker in fine NE'ly tradewinds of 18 knots on slight
seas, the giant trimaran was able to rack up average speeds of over 27 knots! This fifth day at sea has born witness to a
cracking pace then, particularly as the equator was no more than 950 miles ahead of them this Monday lunchtime... "We are
working on the long term scenario: for the passage of the Doldrums we have scheduled a long tack to the SW prior to finally
gybing due South afterwards. We are set to pass the equator prior to sunrise on 30th January... We're going to hit some stronger
tradewinds this Monday afternoon and we will probably save more time over Orange II. It looks like things are shaping up nicely
for the Southern hemisphere too!" detailed Franck Proffit, at the radio session broadcast live on the Groupama
website every lunchtime.
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A hook before the directThe end of the weekend on the other hand was less positive with 'only' 443 miles on the speedo, that is less than a twenty
knot average on Sunday. This reduced pace was due to a stormy disturbance to the South of the Canaries, which caused the wind
to alternate between 7 and 30 knots, preventing a very pure trajectory. Indeed Groupama 3 had to gybe twice in the middle
of the day to shift over to the West so as to round Cape Verde. A double manoeuvre, which wasn't enough since at daybreak,
the crew were forced to make headway at 90° to their normal heading in order to round Santo Antao, the island furthest to
the NW of the archipelago. "We are in fine, relatively flat tradewind seas, with not a cloud on the horizon. This morning
we discovered the island of Santo Antao at sunrise: superb!" exclaimed Franck Cammas at noon this Monday.
This
two hour tack to avoid the wind shadow of Tope de Coroa (1,979 m) was followed by another spot of repositioning two hours
later so as to hunt down this infamous 28° West, the entry point for traversing the Doldrums. It wasn't until the end of the
afternoon that Franck Cammas and his nine crew engaged in a final gybe onto a direct course, due South to the equator.
In
this way Groupama 3 will remain on port tack for a fair while since on the other side of the equator some regular SE'ly and
then E'ly winds await them.
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