Tempo drops a little

New York to Barcelona record IMOCA 60s step back from 24 hour record pace

The first signs of a slow down are with the two Barcelona IMOCA Open 60s as they start to feel the effects of a ridge of high pressure which may prove critical in the quest to win this New York to Barcelona Transoceanic Sailing Record Challenge.

Since Estrella Damm and W Hotels left New York early on Thursday afternoon, the first thousand miles have been covered at close to maximum speed, recording consistently high averages. In the 24 hours into yesterday (Saturday) evening the pace was only 38.7 miles off the 24 hour record mark set by Alex Thomson and Andrew Cape in 2007 on the IMOCA Open 60 Hugo Boss.

But as Sunday pushes on for the two crews the winds have been easing, bringing with it more sail changes and the prospect of traversing the lighter winds of the high pressure ridge, before a long thrash close reaching down the Atlantic to get to the more favourable breeze on the south side of a relatively static, cut off low pressure system. It is estimated this could take them as far as a point midway between the Azores and Madeira, but the speeds are expected to be quick all the way to Gibraltar.

The immediate ridge of high pressure may allow some compression between the Open 60 duelists. W Hotels was a little more than 16 miles behind Estrella Damm this afternoon, but co-skipper Pachi Rivero confirmed that he is very happy with their positioning relative to the leaders and that they will ensure they follow their own strategy to get across the lighter winds zone. Whoever breaks free first could seize a big advantage.

While W Hotels admitted to a minor slow down during the previous day, Pepe Ribes of Estrella Damm told today’s radio conference that they had a hairy few minutes during a sail change yesterday evening when the autopilot lost its signal and sent them spiraling into a Chinese gybe. That took them some time to tidy up and get back on their course, but the downtime has had little net effect on their regular lead over W Hotels.

Part of the reason for the transatlantic challenge is to build hard racing sea miles to ensure the constant improvement of the two Barcelona Open 60s and both co-skippers, Ribes and Pachi Rivero, today paid glowing tribute to the speed and handling gains that have recently been made. “We have a really great boat. What a boat it is.” Ribes emphasised this afternoon.

Pachi Rivero said: “It has been a little more complicated for us these last hours because we had a problem downloading data, and so we have been unable to know where Estrella Damm is, so we had half the day without knowing and that was quite frustrating. But we managed to fix it and we are really quite happy with where we are situated in relation to Estrella Damm. We have been trying a few different sail combinations and did a sail change not too long ago, and we will do another soon. Tactically we’re just intent on crossing the high where it is narrowest, doing our own thing. We are a little bit surprised at the high average speeds we have been doing, but actually you quickly get used to sailing that fast. To try and beat Alex Thomson’s 24 hour record we would have to push the boat a bit harder but we are getting good at that. We need to give a little bit more stability to the boat maybe, but what is good is that we really can feel the benefits of all the changes we have made to the boat to make it better. We have not really had the idea of beating the record, but maybe in the next low pressure if there was a chance we would go for it.”

Peter Becker on W Hotels: “I am very well. You really just get right into the ocean sailing mode, we work pretty hard all the time. We have a saying that every clock is round and so every hour the clock goes round it brings around the next. We have been steering when we feel we are quicker than the pilots, as much as we can. I have been steering all the time, whenever I can! It’s fun! We have had sails up and down, we had the A5 (gennaker) up and changed to the A3, the staysail in and out. The work never ends.”

Pepe Ribes on Estrella Damm: “We slowed down last night changed from the Solent to A5 as we started to go a little more downwind, but the autopilot lost the signal and we Chinese gybed, so we had to stop for a little to recover the boat. Now we are slowing down a little bit because the wind is dropping a bit. Stan is doing very well. He is learning a lot and is a good sailor. He is learning about all the sails, all the angles and how to steer the boat. At the moment he is steering the boat and we have very special characteristics. The wind has a lot of wind shear. The water is very cold and there is a lot more wind at the top of the rig. We are moving downwind but the flow is from the NE. It is very tricky. He is learning all the time, how to drive the boat and many other things. He is doing very well.”