Slow North Atlantic ahead

Barcelona World Race race leader set to be nailed by high pressure

Image above courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems and PredictWind. If you can't see the whole of the table below (this depends which browser you use), scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Barcelona World Race leaders Jean-Pierre Dick and Loick Peyron on Virbac-Paprec 3 are this morning level with the Cape Verde islands on their long slog back up the North Atlantic and into the Mediterranean and on to the finish line where present ETAs have them arriving on 30 March, although presumably this doesn't include potential periods of being becalmed between now and then.

At present Virbac-Paprec 3 is in traditional northeasterly trades from the high currently squished to the southeast, centred northwest of the Canary Islands. However tomorrow a second area of high pressure is set to develop to their northwest and over the course of Thursday the two highs are forecast to merge: Not good as inevitably over Friday and Saturday they will be either on the wind or becalmed. Once they get up to around 30°N the forecast indicates that the wind will be sufficiently backed into the north to allow them to lay Gibraltar. The hold up over Friday/Saturday should mean that Mapfre is able to reverse the trend of the last two days that has seen them fallback from 138 miles astern of the leaders to 216 at the latest sched.

Meanwhile back in the South Atlantic the three boats still chasing third are into the thick of the Doldrums as the latest average speeds of Renault, Estrella Damm and Neutrogena indicate - 2.2, 3.4 and 5.5 respectively. Despite being in the thick of the Doldrums Renault has had a substantially better 24 hour run than the other two covering 165 miles compared to their measly 76 and 88. At present the Doldrums at 30°W are looking horrific - spanning 12°S to 2°N, so it could be some time before this trio cross the Equator. 

Dee Caffari and Anna Corbella on sixth-placed GAES last night passed the latitude of Rio. Luck is favouring them at present, for while by all rights they should be starboard tacking north in northeasterly trades in fact due to the area of high pressure to their south they reaching in optimum conditions the wind 20-25 knots from the ESE and are notching up by far the most miles across the whole fleet at present. The forecast has this wind direction continuing for the rest of the week although the pressure will drop as they approach Recife. Expect them to have closed the gap on the boats ahead considerably by the end of the week.

Back in the south South Atlantic Hugo Boss set sail from the Falklands at around 2100 GMT last night after an intense period of sail and mast track repair by crewmen Andy Meiklejohn and Wouter Verbraak. They have pulled out of their pitlane ahead of Gerard Marin and Ludovic Aglaor aboard Forum Maritim Catala.