Completing his technical stop to repair his starboard foil hydraulics and his bow pulpit Armel Le Cléac’h was making ready to return to the ARKÉA ULTIM CHALLENGE-Brest race track this morning but did not set out at 0738hrs UTC this morning, the 24 hours minimum deadline specified in the race rules.
At the same times the two race leaders, Tom Laperche and Charles Caudrelier are benefiting from ideal conditions and are sprinting on a SE course towards the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope. They are averaging speeds of 30-35kts, Caudrelier has pulled back more than a dozen miles on the leader Laperche since yesterday, and the prediction is both should go a little quicker today.
“They made a shift to move away from the zone of less wind which was to their east,” explains Frédéric Lepeutrec assistant race director. “They are on the rhumb line route and will accelerate a little more in about twenty hours when they get to be in front of the front which will take them to the Cape of Good Hope.”
“This head-to-head battle is keeping the pace up” explains the assistant race director, “But they are managing themselves and their boats and they know that they will soon be into the southern ocean regimes and they still have a long, long way to go.”
Behind them in third Thomas Coville (Sodebo Ultim 3) follows the same course as the two leaders and is in the same wind regime. He is passing to the west of the anticyclone and has also spent the last four hours flying along at nearly 34 knots. A little further north, Anthony Marchand (Actual Ultim 3), who crossed the Equator yesterday is almost at the latitude of Recife where the Maxi Banque Populaire XI is due to leave.
All things being equal Le Cléac’h should start again close to Anthony Marchand (Actual Ultim 3) who is was off Natal this morning. And in sixth Éric Péron (ULTIM ADAGIO, 6th) is now in a good regime of trade winds. His next objective is to cross the doldrums which promise to be a little more complicated to cross than they were for the boats in front and so Péron sould should start to feel their effects later today.
And meantime race management decided to slightly modify the ice exclusion zone last night. It is now slightly further south at the Cape of Good Hope.
