Doldrum calms sees Ecover drift from first place |
| Friday, 16 November 2007 |
Ecover 3 copyright Mark Lloyd
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Ecover 3 Copyright Mark Lloyd
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It’s been a painful24 hours for Mike Golding and Bruno Dubois on ECOVER 3 as they emerge, they hope, from the Doldrums this morning in fifth place on the Transat Jacques Vabre race from Le Havre to Salvador de Bahia.
Forced to relinquish the lead which they had held for four days by a route which left them struggling for breeze whilst the chasing pack, only 50-80 miles to ECOVER’s west, appear to have retained a more solid wind virtually throughout, Golding and Dubois are calculated to be 40.2 miles behind new leader Foncia (Michel Desjoyeaux and Manu Le Borgne) this morning.
What is remarkable about this race is that after more than 13 days of racing the leading six IMOCA Open 60’s are still within 55 miles of each other, virtually lined up with 60 or so miles lateral separation across the course, as if ready for a re-start for the final four days 1200 miles sprint to the finish.
“Yes, it is pretty scary stuff really when you look at it. It has been a dreadful 48 hours for us but that is the pain of this game at times, but for us we are pleased that we know we have a boat which is competitive in the conditions we have had, now we will see how it goes upwind and reaching. It is a simple statement to say we had the boat for seven days of sailing before the start, not an excuse, and so we have to be pleased with what we have and take the last 48 hours as a glitch along the way.” Said Golding this morning,
“ I think we are out of the worst of it. The breeze is building from the SE which is good, but it has been a shocking 24 hours for us. We don’t have a huge amount of breeze now, 7 knots or so, but it is more consistent all the way up the rig so we are going along at 8-9 knots at the moment. It has just been slow, we had a couple of stoppages under clouds but that is all. What is good news is that we are pretty headed so that should be good in the context of it (the breeze) spreading across the course to the guys to the right of us.” Mike continued.
Second placed VM Materiaux (Jean Le Cam and Gildas Morvan) are only 1.2 of a mile - terms of miles to the finish – but they are about 75 miles to the west of Foncia, west of the rhumb line, and still a little further north.
Golding’s hope is that as the SE’ly breeze fills across the course, that some of their advantage will return.
“Hopefully the other guys will be headed as well and we take some advantage of our position.”
Looking at what has happened over the last couple of days Golding muses:
“It became that the only strategy to get past us was to sail to the right of us. And the only one to differ from that was Peyron (Gitana). It is a shame he did that because (as the biggest threat) he kind of forced my hand to go south. I could have ignored that but when he is turning left, it kind of forces you to look at it. And of course the others followed and then it is easy for them to hitch away when they see what is happening and us running into problems. There is nothing magic, you can see what is happening up in front. It should steadily build now.”
“ In fairness though it is not a simple case of ‘everyone pick a number’ it was always clear there was always breeze down the right but unfortunately for us the gradient was never that much, in these windspeeds it only needs to be a knot and it makes a world of difference, to being able to sail or drift.”
A close finish is expected. Mike’s most recent analysis has just hours in it.
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