Mini Transat - leg 2

Upwind start forecast for the 2,900+ mile leg from Lanzarote to Brazil

Leg two of the Mini Transat gets underway this Saturday at the bizarre time of 17:17GMT off Puerto Calero, on the southern coast of Lanzarote. Ahead, for the 70 singlehanded Mini sailors, lies more than 2,900 miles of Atlantic Ocean before they arrive at the Brazilian port of Salvador de Bahia.

The direct route from Lanzarote involves ducking to the south side of Fuerteventura and then continuing on south leaving the Cape Verde islands to starboard. The main issue with the start is that the Trade Winds are currently all messed up thanks to a depression centred 400 or so miles to the northwest of Lanzarote. As a result the forecast for the start is headwinds - 10-15 knot southwesterlies - with no reprieve until Monday morning - the price of having had a downwind blast all the way from La Rochelle one supposes.

By Monday the depression is forecast to become more trough-like and shifting slowly north, but the competitors will then have to negotiate a wind hole on the race course as an area of high pressure forms to the south of the Canaries. Fortunately this looks set to shift east (no doubt eventually turning into the next mega-hurricane) and the northeasterly Trades should fill in from the east over the course of Monday. Thus weather-wise there appears to be little reason to err from the great circle. However a mark of the course requires the boats to head west passing through the Cape Verdes - competitors must leave Santo Antao to starboard and Maio to port.



Once into the northeasterlies it should be a downhill run for the competitors until they reach the Doldrums. Mini sailors are allowed no external communication and only receive a fairly rudimentary weather broadcast on Monaco Radio each day, thus many will be making a call on their passage through the Doldrums based on weather information they have from the start.

While tackling the weather at the start will be important, the Doldrums crossing is tactically the most significant part of the second leg with the potential to hold up competitors for a long time if they are unlucky. The great circle to a point just off Recife (the direct route to Salvador goes overland) takes the boats down to the Equator at 30°W and if they were down there on this route today they would have a fairly fast passage. But trying to forecast what will happen weather-wise at the world's most volatile piece of ocean in two weeks time is a complete lottery.

In the race two years ago Jonathan McKee, leader at the Equator, seemed to be pretty much on the great circle whereas the eventual winner Armel Tripon and other front runners Sam Manuard and Pierre Rolland were further west (see our report here - and the view at the time of 2001 competitor Sam Davies of crossing the Doldrums in a Mini).

Once through the Doldrums and over the Equator it is pretty much southeasterly trades all the way to the finish. There is another mark of the course requiring competitors to stay east of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago (some 300 miles NNE of Recife), just to the right of the great circle to Recife.

Two years ago it took leg winner Armel Tripon 20d 2 hours 39 minutes to complete the second leg. With the slow conditions forecast at start it will be interesting to see if this time can be bettered. Classe Mini are anticipating an 18 day crossing.

The Mini Transat is scored on the combined elapsed times for the first and second legs, but as the second leg is longest, the winner of this leg usually gets the overall prize too. At present Corentin Douguet is leading with a 1 hours 15 advantage on Sebastien Gladu and 3 hours on Britain's Phil Sharp. Spain's Alex Pella is 9 hours 38 minutes behind and Nick Bubb in Whittlebury Hall has 13 hours 53 minutes to catch up. For the leg one first times - click here.

See page 2 for the charts of Armel Tripon's 2003 winning route