Behind

Tricky South Atlantic passage for Banque Populaire

Image above courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems and PredictWind. See Brian Thompson's updates from on board here

Banque Populaire has fallen behind the pace of 'virtual Groupama 3' this morning, although only by 28 miles.

Interestingly, as the image above shows, the French 40m trimaran is having to follow a similar route to the one Cammas and his crew took last year in shaving the Brazilian coast. At present Banque Populaire is 127 miles offshore, about two thirds of the way down to Rio from Recife. The reason for her dramatic course is due to the positioning of the St Helena high - any further east and there'd be less breeze. Banque Populaire has been maintaining a reason speed over this difficult period - over the early hours of this morning she was averaging 15-20 knots, but now is back to over 20 knots.

The question is where will Banque Populaire jump on to the Southern Ocean expressway? There is currently a band of favourable northwesterlies 500 miles to her south, associated with a depression deep in the Southern Ocean. But come Monday morning and this depression has shifted east and it seems like that skipper Pascal Bidegorry, navigator Juan Vila and router Marcel van Triest back ashore in Majorca, will be forced to send Banque Populaire around the west side of the high pressure to the northwest of the depression. There is the possibility of heading over the top of the high with the benefit of sailing considerably less miles, but with it comes patches of light winds, headwinds and the chance of the high moving over the top of them. We reckon they'll probably lump for option a. If this is the case then it is likely that Banque Populaire will be crossing 40degS some 300-400 miles to the west of where Groupama did.

We wait to see what happens tomorrow.