The virtual race tightens

An update on Olivier de Kersauson and his progress on board Geronimo

Day 43
Position at 2317GMT: 48°41S 60°58W
24 hour run: 443 nm
Average speed: 18.46 knots

Now into the South Atlantic, Geronimo is still enjoying brisk southwesterly winds and the crew have managed to cut the corner and sail to the west of the Falkland Islands (both Cheyenne and Orange left them to port). They are now only 555 miles behind Cheyenne's record but equally Orange's relative position for the en of day 43 is only 122 miles astern of them.

The crew is still stunned by their 10-day beating in icy cold temperatures. “Never again, whatever happens," commented de Kersauson. "If we’d known, we’d have stopped at New Zealand. Now that we’re out of danger and look back at what we’ve been through, you have to admit that what we did was bloody stupid and we must never repeat the same mistake...Now we can get back to doing some yachting...

"We hoisted a lot of sail an hour ago and we're making good headway," continued the skipper. "The sea is friendly, it's calm and we have 30 knots of wind. There's still a big swell, but we're surfing at 28 to 29 knots - it's great... It's over (the Southern Ocean). We're going north, we're going north in latitude... but we need to get north. We need some warmer temperatures. All the way through the south, we've been scrambling upwind…"

After rounding Cape Horn De Kersauson has hung a sharp left to get away from the Southern Ocean as quickly as possible, but looks to drive headlong into the arms of a high pressure system forming directly to their west. De Kersauson will want to get into favourable winds to the north of this but the forecast charts show the system moving northeast at a similar pace to them. Thus he will be faced with three options - sailing way out to the east to keep in the favourable winds to the east of the high, sail through the middle of the high (dangerous as the high is tracking in the same direction as they are sailing in and they could be trapped forever) or maintain their present course which will take them upwind to the west of the high. Alternatively de Kersauson's forecast could indicate the speed of movement of the system to be different to our forecast. We shall see over the course of this weekend.