The fourth postulate
The shortest way to go from one point to another is the straight line : at least that is what we use to say on land… But at sea, between the starting and the finishing line, there are a lot of courses that happen to be longer but faster. It is tough to plan them, and easier to analyse after ! In this case, three courses meet at the same point for a suspense finish …
In this « blurred system », there is almost no chance that the course a route planer had prepared is right after eight days of Ocean race, except if the datas are constantly updated. But that is not the case for the Minis as they have no shore contact, so no possibility to correct their option several times a day. Leaving Horta one week ago with a fixed plan, the solo sailors have understood very fast that the real situation had nothing to do with the virtual simulation.
When some have decided about their strategy from the start, such as the Spanish Gerard Marin (Escar l’escala-CN Llanca) in the North or Hervé Piveteau (Jules) in the South, others have respected the route plan to the letter and…. Bang ! Straight to the Azores high pressure… Stuck in the calms (most of the pack). Others have listened to their instinct preferring the rhumb line like David Sineau (Bretagne Lapins) or Isabelle Joschke (Degrémont), at last, others have changed their mind in the middle of the race like Adrien Hardy (Brossard) or Olivier Cusin (NégaWatt) who have then decided to go North.
Less than two days before the arrival in Les Sables d’Olonne, the aspect of the race has then changed : four possible winners (Sineau, Joschke, Marin, Hardy) with three referees who still can slip in between them. Too close from the Spanish coasts, David Sineau, can see his advance decrease as the hours go : benefiting now from a eight knots North Westerly breeze, he is going to face a light downwind flood (less than five knots) till Thursday morning. A tough night, full of doubts is looming for the leader, who has been in front of the fleet for four days, and who can hardly reach a five knots speed that is even going to decrease at sunset. If he does not change his course to head North (and thus, going away from the coasts and the rhumb line), his place should be in danger within 24 hours !
Offshore, in the middle of the Biscay bay, Gerard Marin keeps on gaining miles. Fifth in the overall classification (and easy first in the production boats ranking), apparently the Spanish knows very well the Iberian traps : he sails on the 45°North, that is to say more than 120 miles from the coasts, and does not stop from accelerating, with the arrival of a cold front generating more than fifteen knots of wind, then twenty and at least twenty-five on Thursday. With an average speed of eight knots on this Wednesday afternoon, he has been gaining some ten miles a day since he has turned right, he was more than 225 miles behind the leader by then ! After four days, he is only some sixty miles behind… And behind him, the young Adrien Hardy (Brossard) is accelerating : two days ago, the winner of the first leg has been brave enough to break the contact heading North and cross behind Gérard Marin. And with the wind coming, he has a nine knots speed and comes back very fast.
At least, on the medium course, Isabelle Joschke (Degrémont) can avoid the Spanish calms and touch fast the new breeze. But she also has to watch for a possible come back from François Salabert (Aréas Assurances) who is not very far behind her stern, Peter Laureyssens (Ecover) who is clearly more in the South, just behind the leader, and Andraz Mihelin (Adria Mobil Too) who has been accelerating those last hours. And surprise, surprise ! Five of them (Hardy, Mihelin, Sineau, Joschke, Salabert) have finished in the top six in the Azores, with less than four hours of difference at the end of the first leg. So, not only, the victory of the second leg is at stake, but also the general prototypes ranking is doomed to falter
DBo. & AM.
 jeudi 24 août 2006
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Fabienne Robin est arrivée
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