Hello Morocco

Our morning update from the Barcelona World Race

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.

An unpleasant night and morning for Jean-Pierre Dick and Loick Peyron on Virbac Paprec 3 as they close to within 40 miles of the Moroccan coast at the first sched this morning. Satellite wind radar images indicate that at present the Barcelona World Race leaders have 30 knots northeasterlies, although once they tack out the unpleasant conditions will ease off slightly. At present they are 338 miles away from Gibraltar as the crow flies, but will have to sail more like 400 miles given they are on the wind. So we can expect them to be at Gibraltar in the early hours of Friday morning, just in time for the breeze to veer into the east according to the forecast... Once into the Med the wind off the Spanish coast will remain on the nose, but the forecasts are indicating there to be more favourable southerly breeze off the north African coast.

Despite the nasty conditions for the race leaders they have extended over second placed Mapfre over the last 48 hours, up from 270 miles to 336 miles at the latest sched. The reason is primarily that Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez have themselves been on the wind as they struggle past the Canaries. At the latest sched they are 20 miles north of Tenerife. They should be able to regain some miles on the leaders towards the end of the week as with the wind going east they should then be able to lay Gibraltar. However with the leaders having 860 miles left to go before they reach the finish line, the first two places on the podium now seem to be cast.

Conditions are getting interesting for the next trio as with the Azores high heading off towards the Iberian peninsula, so these boats are doing a Thomas Coville (still 525 miles to go...) taking a northerly or NNWerly heading in order to remain in favourable breeze. The high is turning ridge-like with the WSWern extremity extending out into the Atlantic and this morning third placed Renault is set to negotiate the 'tail of the dorsal', as the French describe it, so we can expect Estrella Damm and Neutrogena to close on her. Already this has happened over the last 24 hours with Estrella Damm's deficit on third down from 165 to 150 over the last 24 hours and Neutrogena's down from 203 to 189.

Once through the ridge Renault will extend away again, blasting along on a course for Gibrlatar in strong southeasterlies ahead of front associated with the depression far to their north.

Now into the northern hemisphere, Dee Caffari and Anna Corbella on GAES are suffering as the trades have a more northerly component to them than they'd like. As a result GAES also has some west in her heading. This is due to rectify itself over the next 24 hours.