West is best (at the moment)

Armel Tripon and Franck Le Gal pull out a 9 mile lead in the Transat AG2R La Mondiale

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

Positions at 0748 GMT

Day three of the Transat AG2R La Mondiale and while over the course of Tuesday there was pretty much a different leader at every sched, over the last 24 hours former Mini Transat winner Armel Tripon and Franck Le Gal on Gedimat have been consistently ahead. Overnight and during the position reporting black-out, they have done particularly well, just 0.2 miles ahead of Groupe Bel at the beginning of the evening while at the first sched this morning they had pulled out a lead of 13 miles. The night has been particularly good for the boats that have committed to the west of the race course and as the boats has crossed the occluded front and the depression to their south has moved left across their path causing the wind to back to the north, so we reckon the westerly have seen better pressure. Compared to Groupe Bel for example, slightly further to the east, which averaged just 3.2 knots in the four hours leading up to this morning first sched at 0448, compared to Gedimat's 5.8. While this is true for Gedimat and Ronan Treussart and Yannick Le Clech on Lufthansa, Armel le Cleac'h and Fabien Delahaye on BritAir have jumped from fifth to third through sheer grit and boat speed, pulling ahead of what yesterday was the lead group with Cercle Verte, Groupe Bel and Banque Populaire right behind them.

Roman Attanasio and Sam Davies on Saveol are leading some boats some 30 miles to the east of BritAir's group while Eric Drouglazet and Lauent Pellecuer on Luisina ahead of another group 30 miles to their east. Some more race favourites, Nicolas Lunven and Jean le Cam on Generali and Nicolas Troussel and Thomas Rouxel on Credit Mutuel de Bretagne are closest to the Portugese coast (some 70 miles SSW of Oporto).

Weather-wise as mentioned, the shallow depression to their south has now moved from right to left (eastward) ahead of them and is now over the Iberian peninsula with the wind now light and in the north. With the shift so all the boats are now heading on to more of a SSEerly course getting them closer to the great circle to the Canaries gate - still 730 miles away for Gedimat.

By this evening the wind is forecast to have backed into the northeast and the boats may gybe back this afternoon. We say 'may' because  the crews will be looking as the longer term forecast into the weekend and this is much simpler - an area of high pressure is developing over the Canaries and Madeira (ie exactly where they want to go) and those that skirt furthest to the east round this will find the best pressure versus them having to sail a longer route - this is why God invented routing software! So while the easterly boats are looking down the pan at present - just wait....