Big leg ahead

Withthe second leg of the Mini Transat starting tomorrow so the jury have been issuing penalties

Tomorrow, Saturday 6 October, at 12.02 local time, the second leg of the Transat 6.50 Charente Maritime/Bahia starts with all 89 boats due to take the start line.

Today the Slovenia team Adria4ocean got good news from the Race Committee regarding the penalties and protests following the start of the first leg (You can watch the video footage of the collision at the start here: http://digbyfox.tv/videoportfolio.htm - you need QuickTime to watch it): Andraž Mihelin's protest about the collision at the start was discussed and he was awarded 30 minutes, subtracted from his elapsed time for leg one.

Brossard skipper Adrien Hardy got a two hour penalty because he wasn't on board of his boat at the time of the departure from the marina in La Rochelle. So the overall results from leg one see Andraž move up to fifth with Hardy seventh. Mihelin trails fourth placed Ronan Deshayes now by 1 hour 4 minutes.

In addition to this Gregory Magne in Upain.com has been penalised one hour for unsealing one of his emergency water canisters, while Sebastien Marsset on Veole Association and Bertrand Delesne on Gall-Menguy have both been penalised an hour for replacing both their daggerboards.

The second leg of the Mini Transat is the big one, 3,100 miles from Funchal, Madeira to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, a passage that starts in the northeasterly trades before having tackle to Doldrums and then seeking out the South Atlantic trades before arriving at the finish.

At present the weather for leg two is looking fairly benign for the start tomorrow. Come start time tomorrow a low pressure system will be hovering northeast of the Azores with Madeira between the southwesterlies on the southeast side of this and the northeasterly trades to the southeast. Hanging a hard left as soon as the competitors leave Madeira will get them into stronger more favourable breeze, but means they risk having the tackle the Canaries with all the potential problems of dangerous accelaration zone and wind shadows. If they stick to the rum line, it will be slow going for the first 24 hours but the wind is forecast to fill in gradually after this as a new mid-Atlantic high pressure develops way out to the west. The longer term forecast has this area of high pressure developing and eventually extending up into Europe (hurrah!) making for solid tradewinds for the competitors all way down to the Cape Verdes.