Safran breaks out of jail

As French is fully nailed overnight in the IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race

Overnight there were some heart-stopping moments for the IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race’s long term frontrunner, Safran, as her hard fought lead evaporated over a matter of hours.

Since leaving the Azores in her wake, the French IMOCA 60 had extended her position to more than 80 miles ahead of second placed Hugo Boss. But over the course of yesterday, Safran experienced the wind getting lighter and lighter. In turn her boat speed gradually dropped and by 02:30 UTC this morning had dipped below 5 knots. At this point Hugo Boss, had closed to within just 15 miles of her, with third placed Neutrogena just one more mile behind.

Sadly for the crew chasing down Safran, this happy scenario was not to last. The French IMOCA 60 was first to escape the light winds and over the course of this morning, as those behind have been wallowing, her speed has built and built. At 10:30 UTC Safran was lying 90 miles due set of Cape St Vincent (southwest Portugal) and was charging along at an average speed of 17 knots, compared to 9.9, 7.5 and 5.1 for Hugo Boss, Team Neutrogena and GAES respectively. And for the last two even these speeds were fast – over the previous four hours they had only averaged 4.1 knots! In turn Safran’s lead over Hugo Boss was back up to 56 miles and it seems very likely that her advantage over Pepe Ribes and Ryan Breymaier’s IMOCA 60 later today will increase to more than the 80 miles it was two days ago.

The closest fight by far between the four boats has been between the two IMOCA 60s run by Sir Keith Mills’ company 5°WEST: Hugo Boss and Neutrogena. Sailing their four year older boat Neutrogena, Guillermo Altadill and his Chilean co-skipper José Muñoz have been doggedly gunning for their team mates, on Hugo Boss, Pepe Ribes and American Ryan Breymaier.

“Hugo Boss is faster than Neutrogena,” recounted Altadill. “We were trying to keep up with them by playing every puff to keep our boat speeds similar.”

This was proving effective: At one point yesterday evening Neutrogena had closed in to within 300m of her rivals. “We could see the faces of Pepe and Ryan when we shone a spot light on them!” continued Altadill.

Hugo Boss has been dogged by her crew still ‘learning’ this complex boat plus a few breakages including the top of their mast track. This they were hoping to fix over the last day in the light conditions. Despite this, their match race with Neutrogena has come to an end. Both boats tacked east at 05:40 UTC and since then in Hugo Boss has managed to pull away and is now 13 miles ahead.

This morning the crew on GAES was feeling the most pain, as their yacht was utterly becalmed, 100 miles behind the race leader. Worse, the wind, when a breath of it did occasionally pass through, was still from the south, indicating that they were only just entering the light patch. “We’ve stopped again,” reported Anna Corbella. “It’s infuriating - we are trying to sail east, but there’s nothing we can do. We were expected to get closer to the fleet, but this wind isn’t helping us.”

Now out into the building northerly winds off the Portugal’s west coast, Safran must past Cape St Vincent and then sail a further 180 miles on to Gibraltar. During this time the wind will shift into the northeast and then the east coinciding with their passage through the Strait of Gibraltar. Her ETA at the Strait will be around midday tomorrow but passing through looks set to be a highly unpleasant one – both upwind and with the wind against the tide, causing a lumpy unpredictable sea, that our Spanish colleague and expert describes as being like ‘boiling soup’. Back marker GAES is expected off Gibraltar around 12 hours later.