Through the Cape Verdes

An update on the cat versus tri non-stop round the world match race

Since yesterday's update the maxi-multihull battle between Bruno Peyron's Orange II and Olivier de Kersauson's Geronimo has continued on much the same lines. The boats are now into the northeasterly Trades and the match race between two of the fastest offshore boats on the planet is turning more into a drag race with Orange II out to the west and Geronimo sticking closer to the great circle route to the east.

Despite sailing more miles Orange II is eating into Geronimo's lead (remember de Kersauson's maxi-tri started with a nine hour head start) and yesterday they covered 530 miles compared to Geronimo's 486 miles, Peyron's bigger newer boat beginning to show her legs.

This morning the boats have both been passing the Cape Verde islands, but strategically Orange II has kept the west African island group to port whereas Geronimo is sailing through the middle of them. Taking their distance to go to a waypoint to the east of Fernando de Noronha off the Brazilian coast suggests that Orange II have closed Geronimo's lead down to just 30 miles or just over an hour of sailing if you're sitting on a maxi-multihull.

”We don’t want to keep on moving west” commented Olivier de Kersauson yesterday, explaining that since the Doldrums are not clearly established to the east, there is no reason to add to their longitude as they close on the Equator. “Heading dead south, Geronimo is making very reasonable progress in the right direction. We’re occasionally hitting 30 knots, but not all the time. Racing before the wind at these speeds beneath the moon on a silver sea is absolutely wonderful- really something!”

De Kersauson says that contrary to the forecasts the trade winds they have been experiencing have been quite brisk - as much as 34 knots at times. In these conditions the big tri has been occasionally hitting 30 knots. At present they are gybing downwind every five or six hours sailing under small genniker and reefed main.

"It’s great, and we have the moon at night too," says de Kersauson in a sentimental moment. "So everything is perfect - it’s like being in a film! The days are getting longer too as we approach the Equator and leave the northern winter behind. The main thing though is that the nights are really fantastic. Sailing like this in moonlight is… rough, fun and at the same time emotional. It’s very beautiful. Making 25 to 30 knots over a silver sea is really something."

Meanwhile Bruno Peyron described the conditions they have been experiencing on the big cat. "Now we're back in the west and we've just done 20 straight hours at 21 knots of average speed. We're currently sailing in 20 knots of northeasterly wind, with gusts of 25." With 530 miles under their belt until early this morning, Peyron fully expects to maintain this pace for the next two days.

"The sea is rather predictable, and we sent up all the canvas the boat can hold which means we're under full main and gennaker. There's no way we can hoist more sail area", says Peyron, who confirms this already represents 1100 sqm! "We had to take everything down during the night because we felt a slight impact, which caused the boat to stop quite abruptly. We checked around and discovered we had hit a big shark, maybe 2-3 metres long"

Peyron adds: " Geronimo's position is very interesting, because obviously we don't have the same weather analysis. We chose to sail to the west right now. Sailing down the Moroccan coast pays off at first, but afterwards it's difficult to regain good positioning. Maybe we're wrong, but we made our choice. It will become tighter and tighter. For the moment, we still have a big difference in terms of longitude but we know we'll cross the Equator with 60 to 100 miles of difference, at the most".