Gitana update

Loick Peyron's Open 60 heads for Douarnanez while Lionel Lemonchois and his crew are soon to start their Asia tour

While Loick Peyron and his IMOCA Open 60 Gitana Eighty are preparing to compete in the Grand Prix Petit Navire, the Gitana 13maxi-catamaran is making preparations in Yokohama, Japan, for a month and a half long tour of Asia.

With 15 days to go before the start of the Artemis Transat, so Gitana Eighty
will be one of eight boats heading for the Transat, alongside Class40s and Minis, competing at the 9th Grand Prix Petit Navire over five days in Douarnanez Bay.

Skipper Loïck Peyron and his shore crew have been forced to delay their arrival in Douarnenez by 24 hours following a mast swap performed by the Gitana Team at the start of the week. Equipped with a new spar on Monday morning, the Open 60 and its skipper are currently at sea carrying out a 300 mile qualifier, which is compulsory prior to the Transat to qualify the new rig. They are expected in Douarnanez on Saturday morning.

During the Grand Prix Petit Navire Gitana Eighty will take part in speed runs in the bay, followed by some coastal courses for first next three days. This exhibition event in the IMOCA calendar will act as a warm-up prior to the Artemis Transat and allow the team to make final systems checks prior to the transat start on 11 May.

“These runs and races are an excellent opportunity to come and measure yourself against the future competition, particularly in terms of speed," commented Peyron. "And, although crewed and solo races are very different, these few days of close contact racing are always good practice for what’s to come. I have some excellent memories of the runs aboard Gitana 11 last year, as the Douarnenez race zone, for the short amount of time that the wind played ball, perfectly lends itself to that. We racked up the best performance in the speed runs with an average of 31.86 knots”.

On Wednesday morning, Gitana Eighty will set sail from Brittany, bound for Sutton Harbour, at the foot of Plymouth's Barbican area on England's south-west coast where the build-up to the Artemis Transat will take place.

Gitana 13’s Asian tour

In a few days time, Lionel Lemonchois and his crew will bid farewell to Japan to continue with their 2008 record campaign. The next stopover for Baron Benjamin de Rothschild's 105ft maxi-catamaran is the town of Dalian, 1,432 miles away in China.

Sylvain Mondon (Météo France) outlines the weather scenario required to set off on this latest record attempt: “To leave Tokyo Bay in optimum conditions, we're after easterly to southeasterly winds, which could be generated by a low arriving from the south or southwest in a similar fashion to the low encountered by Gitana 13 when it arrived in Japan. The goal is essentially to set off on this course with some sufficiently regular downwind conditions, ideally in excess of 25 knots. If these conditions come to pass, Gitana 13 may be able to minimise the number of manœuvres and thus make Dalian in three or four days."

In 2006, Ellen MacArthur sailed a similar tour to that which Gitana 13 is set to embark on.

Gitana 13’s Asian stopovers include Dalian, Qingdao (China), Taipei (Taiwan), Hong Kong, Macao (administrative regions with a special status in China).