Reeling in Joyon

Thomas Coville has pulled back 100 miles with more to come this week as Sodebo enters the Pacific

Image above courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems and PredictWind.

Finally Thomas Coville and Sodebo have made a small inroad into the incredible pace of Francis Joyon and IDEC, reducing their deficit from 1238 miles to 1123 over the last 48 hours.

The weekend has seen Coville turn south again, 'threading' Sodebo through the remote islands off the south of New Zealand, passing below Campbell Island 24 hours ago. With the wind backing into the west so Sodebo's descent below 55°S levelled out at around this time, although at 0700 this morning, with the wind still in the west, Sodebo gybed south once again.

Weather-wise at present Sodebo and Coville are continuing to ride the WNWerly winds to the northeast of a depression hovering off Antarctica, with a shallow depression to their east. Sodebo has gybed this morning so that she can stay in stronger winds developed by the Antarctic depression. Fortunately an area of high pressure to the east of New Zealand is set to come to the rescue allowing Sodebo to continue making good progress in westerly winds for the rest of the week. This may also allow Sodebo - if the ice reports allow - to continue on her southerly route east across the Pacific section of the Southern Ocean, enabling her to sail a shorter course that IDEC.

On his circumnavigation Joyon was relatively slow on his equivalent of this coming Wednesday and had a very slow day on his equivalent of next Saturday, so we think there's a good opportunity for Coville to get his deficit down to 700-800 miles on Joyon by the time he reaches Cape Horn. When we spoke to Coville recently he reckoned he was still in with a good chance of breaking Joyon's record provided he was no more than 1000 miles astern of IDEC at Cape Horn.

Obviously over the course of this week Coville will have the added entertainment of picking off the Barcelona World Race fleet. Already he has overhauled the three backmarkers, but due to the ice waypoint gates in the doublehanded round the world race, the track east of the IMOCA 60 monohulls is some 250+ miles to the north of where Sodebo is heading. Next up GAES and Hugo Boss...