Forging ahead

Cheyenne opens out clear lead over her 'ghost' competitor. Brian Thompson reports from on board

Position at 0510GMT: 33deg 18.440S 30deg 29.630W
Course/speed: 142deg/16 knots
TWS/A: 17 knots 360deg

Another useful day's run for Steve Fossett and the crew of Cheyenne who up until 0510 this morning had polished off another 450 miles. Still negotiating the South Atlantic high pressure system at around the latitude of the River Plate (between Uruguary and Argentina) they have over the last 24 hours crossed tracks with Bruno Peyron's Orange. Sailing down the coast of Brazil Cheyenne had been sailing the shorter course - now they will adding miles in order to get past the South Atlantic high.

The weather ahead of the 125ft catamaran continues to look volatile but their timing seems good and while they may experience light conditions today the forecast charts show the South Atlantic high slowly receeding to the east over the weekend. Tonight the crew of Cheyenne will get their first taste of the westerlies of the Southern Ocean at around 36degS.

Brian Thompson reports from on board Cheyenne:

An unexpectedly good day today as we notched up 454 miles and took a hundred mile lead on our 'ghost ship' Orange. It’s the first lead we have had since the start and it feels good. Tomorrow Orange starts to turn SE for Cape Town and makes some miles in the right direction, whilst our routing is taking us in a more southerly direction around the South Atlantic High. So tomorrow we will lose some miles and probably then stay level the day after. It’s an incredibly close race. Only five hours difference in the first 13 days.

The push we had yesterday was from some 15-20 knot trade winds that came in, a little stronger than forecast. As I write this the winds are starting to fall to 10 knots, and the barometer is climbing slowly as we approach the high. We have the maximum sail up; the big gennaker, the full main and the staysail to push us downwind. That’s 13,500 sq feet of sail area, approx 1350 sq metres...

Anytime you play with a high pressure you are taking a risk of it enveloping you, and stopping you dead in your tracks. It can unexpectedly change shape or move position, and is much less predictable than a low pressure system. We can expect a frustrating period ahead as we run into the light airs on the fringes of the high. Fingers crossed that the models run by the supercomputers in the US and Europe are going to accurately forecast this subtle situation...

Today we have made quite a few sail changes from blast reacher, to solent, to blast reacher to big gennaker, as well as dropping and hoisting the blast to fine tune the luff tension. Our crew work, and communication is getting much better with all these changes and they feel almost effortless now. It is still a good deal of grinding to get the sails up and down but after 30 times you get used to it. Added to each change of gennaker there are four furls/unfurls of the staysail and solent, so that we have the bigger headsail up for the time that the gennakers are down on the deck. Glad that
we were going to the gym for the six weeks of standby before the start...

Justin went up to the masthead today and all seemed well up there. Meanwhile Nick is coming out as a 'twitcher', having been seen with a field guide to seabirds. We are allowed one book each and that was his choice, and it more than reinforces his position as ships naturalist, a traditional position on round the world voyages - one taken on by Charles Darwin in his youth. Nick spotted a white chinned petrel, or Cape Hen, which nests in the nearby South Atlantic islands like Tristan de Cunha.

Otherwise we see flying fish by the dozens. They do seem better flight trained in the southern hemisphere as they avoid the kamikaze attacks we were subjected to near the Cape Verdes.

Now we are at 30S and it’s still very warm, like the Caribbean. The cloudscapes are spectacular with the clear air down here. So could be a green flash tonight...

Brian