Code Red...still

While Coville postpones solo transat record attempt, Ellen hangs in there

While French skipper Thomas Coville and his 60ft trimaran Sodebo have had to leave New York abandoning any chance of clinching the singlehanded west to east transatlantic record this season, for Ellen and her shore team, the standby mode remains permanently on Red as the weather systems sweeping across the Atlantic continue to be unsettled due to the very active hurricane season.

The latest update from US weather routers Commanders' Weather identifies strong winds generating from the east coast of the States this week but not in the right direction: "Although there are significant amounts of wind in the second half of this week their direction is not really suitable for an attempt. Longer term the weather pattern looks to be getting quite active with several vigorous frontal systems moving off the East Coast. The next frontal system that could offer a potenntial weather window may arrive early next week so we will track how it evolves through this week."

Ellen has been on standby since the beginning of September and realistically this standby period will have to come to an end around 20 October if Ellen is to get back in time to compete in the same Transat Jacques Vabre race on board the Open 60 monohull Sill et Veolia with Roland Jourdain.

With an almost guaranteed period of 'Code Red' standby over the next week, Ellen will head to France to spend a week training on board Sill et Veolia in preparation for the Transat Jacques Vabre. They will work on boat preparations and sail testing off Concarneau on the north-west coast of France which is home to Jourdain's Open 60. "

We completed our 1000-mile qualifier for the Transat Jacques Vabre race in early May but that is the only time we have sailed together this year. Sill is a new boat built for the latest edition of the Vendée Globe and I have much to learn about her and the boat set-up. My last race on an Open 60 was on board Kingfisher in the 2002 Route du Rhum so I am really looking forward to racing on these kind of boats again, especially with Bilou [Roland Jourdain] who is a great competitor and a great friend."

The Transat Jacques Vabre will take the 35-boat fleet through both the stormy conditions of the Bay of Biscay, down to the tropical conditions of the Equator before reaching the finish destination of Salvador de Bahia in Brazil after covering 4,500 miles.