Past Finisterre

Still no clear leader has emerged in the Transat AG2R La Mondiale

See the image above full size here - courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems and PredictWind

Positions at 1000 GMT 

With the Transat AG2R La Mondiale fleet having passed Cape Finistere and its associated accelerated wind zones and shipping lanes last night, so we are seeing a range of tactics being played out, determined by how far offshore the boats are. In the extremes, Concarneau-St Barth holding 10th place is the furthest west while tailenders MemoireStBarth.com are indeed becoming a distance memory having shaved Cape Finistere leaving them some 75 miles behind the leaders. Excluding MemoireStBarth.com the remainder of the fleet occupy a 75 mile wide race track, the easternmost of these some 80 miles west of Vigo at the latest sched. 

While it still remains close, with 10 miles separating the top 10 boats in terms of DTF, a trio has made a small break overnight with Open 60 skipper Kito de Pavant and round the world maxi-cat sailor Sebastien Audiagne the leader for the last two scheds, but with Jeanne Grégoire and Gérald Véniard on board Banque Populaire and 2003 Mini Transat winner Armel Tripon sailing with Franck Le Gal aboard Gedimat both hot on Groupe Bel's heels, all three still within a mile of each other in terms of DTF. These three are among the westernmost boats where judging from the boat speeds they appear to have a little more pressure

Weather-wise at present a shallow depression (currently centred some 330 miles to the SW of the leaders) is moving east across the path of the fleet with a weak occluded front the boats will have to cross today to its northwest. The European weather model is showing the centre of the low to have moved over the Portugese coast by midnight tonight. With this movement so the wind will back into the north over the course of the day with those in the west further benefitting by seeing this shift and benefitting from more pressure earlier. With the depression moving over the Iberian peninsula over the course of Thursday, so the dominant weather feature becomes an area of high pressure developing over the Canary Islands - just where the boats are heading, in order to pass through a mandatory waypoint gate. However in fact this is a blessing in disguise for were it not for this gate the boats would be forced to take the more direct course towards St Barts and this would see them upwind for the best part of a week in a scenario similar to what we saw in the Class40's Solidaire du Chocolat and the  Transat Jacques Vabre last autumn. The waypoint gate at least forces the boats to go the pretty way.

From Banque Populaire, the leader at the first sched this morning, Jeanne Gregoire reported: "We haven't had much rest of the last 24 hours, but we are benefitting now from our efforts passing Cape Finisterre. We are first at the 5:00 sched but there is much work to be done, because the other boats remain grouped near us. The weather is very changable and that will influence our strategy over the next few hours."

Kito de Pavant reported: "The conditions are not very simple. There was a slow down at the beginning of night. We expected for quite a while that passing Cape Finisterre there would be more upheavals in the results, that gaps would widen, but the boats are still very close from/to each other. So all that for nothing - it is very frustrating!

See the latest blog from Sam Davies here