Day 16: Doldrums ahead

Well the front runners have all shown their hands and we look set to be just west of the leaders going into the Doldrums. All as we wanted, so good news there. Doldrums not looking huge at the moment but still happy with our position, if we all come out as we have gone in, I’d be surprised though.

Personally speaking I’m hoping we come out a little cleaner and closer to the front!! We could really do with some rain to wash both ourselves and to clean up the mess where Tanguy sits for dinner!

After some persistent engine problems we seem to be managing the situation (touch wood, finger crossed etc) and our big spi, which has been, getting endless abuse is just about holding up to. Several repairs are damaging the aesthetics but she is still big and beautiful to me.

We seem to easing ahead very slowly of most of the pack behind and we have been consistently putting a mile or two on 40 DEGRESS (n 7th) over the last day or two. Marc Emig and Bertrand de Broc in 4th are around 40 miles ahead and APPART CITY is around 20.

With fresh SE trade winds expected after the Doldrums, we are hoping our powerful beast will rise to the challenge and make some gains for us on the home stretch. Lets just see how the Doldrums go first though.

Cheers, Nick

Day 16: Engine problems and big leap forward

The weekend has been filled with diesel fumes and motor repairs for Nick Bubb and Tanguy de Lamotte on board Novedia Group/S.E.T. Environnement. Nick and Tanguy are now in 5th place – they are officially listed as 4th, but as Italia Telecom currently is listed as ”position unknown” we suspect that they still are up front.

Word from Tanguy Monday morning:

- A few lines to tell you that it look like we have solved the problem with the engine. We now have full charge and the engine ran “normally” last night.

- One thing Nick did not tell you in the last report were that we had to fix the tack of our big spi. The webbing were damaged so I decided to go out on the pole with my climbing harness to stitch some new webbing on, but as I was starting on the first one the remaining of the last webbing ripped and the kite flew backward behind the main and I was left alone at the end of the pole… we dropped it and put the medium spi up very quickly and I started the repair on deck: 3 new webbings on the sail tack! and 20 minutes later the big spi was up again. It has not come down since.

Day 15: Off the charts…

There’s no need for alarm even is Nick and Tanguy aren’t on the Sunday morning position update. They are hanging in there. Here’s the latest from our man Nick:

Tricky night with light winds between 6 and 10 knots varying in direction from 355 to 080. We have been gybing downwind as we skirt pass to the SE of the Cape Verde’s. Think we have done very well with the angles, but not sure about the pressure relative to the rest of the fleet. Only 40 Degrees choose to pass through the islands of the front-runners…

Have been in 7th for the last few position updates and are steadily closing on 6th and 5th. Now only 18 miles to 40 Degress and 23 to Appart City.

All good onboard, getting very hot especially as engine broke down last night so now charging…nervous times. Decided to leave it till first light to fix. Seems we some hove go air into the fuel so I have spent about 2 hours bleeding the whole system. Very hot, sweaty and now covered in oil and diesel…o well I can’t shower in about 10 days time. Nice!

Day 14: Speeding along.

Saturday morning Nick and Tanguy are in 7th place.

- Taken a few god shifts today, going smoothly…this is not over by a long way, says Nick.

The wind has backed off and they have 5 knots boat speed. Peter Harding and Ann Liardet are the next boat to overtake for Nick and Tanguy. 40 Degrees are in 6th place 18 theoretical nautical miles closer to the finish line, but Harding has chosen the most westerly course in the fleet and is sailing between Santiago and Maio.

Day 13: 11th and closing rapidly!

After much debate we choose to gybe back out east…again last night in search of stronger winds. Having spent yesterday crawling round the internet and looking through a lot of weather data, we decided that there was a ’significant’ chance of stronger breeze off the Nouadhibou headland in Mauritania – good geography lesson!

Anyway. Long story short, excellent 20 knots from NNE has helped us take over 20 miles from Giovanni in the last two position updates. More importantly, we are now only 29 miles from 6th and still flying along. We expect to gybe back this morning and begin the 300 mile leg down to the Eastern side of the Cape Verde’s.

Got to go, fingers crossed all round!

Good progress………

A slightly disappointing night but never the less still good progress. We were expecting a solid 14 knots all night and had spent the day manoeuvring ourselves closer to the coast to line up for this new breeze which in the end did not materialise. We spent most of the night in 6 to 9 knots from the north east and it looks like those in the mid west had better breeze because they pulled out a few miles on us. The same for those in the far west who got south enough……….no consolation for ’clarkee’ and ‘kiwi dave’ who ‘defected’ from the east to the far west and have been losing miles quickly over the last day and are now back in 20th.

The bigger picture still looks very good for us with a good wind angle to start crossing over toward the Cape Verdes and lining up for the doldrums. Right now it looks like we will take one more hitch towards the African coast before passing to the east of the Cape Verde islands.

The breeze up to 9 – 10 knots now (0800 UTC), so we are moving a little better. However, the direction of the wind is not so useful, 050 ,so a gybe could  be imminent. Looks like the wind filled in from behind as the fleet is really starting to compress together.

Lots of fishing boats last night, tense times for many reasons……

Cheers, Nick

Rationing needed

So, here it is…. amount of food and water is tight but amount of fuel is fine.  We should be OK though, just a little thinner in Brazil!!

Daily rations assuming we have 14 days left (total race length 24/5 days), to be reviewed post doldrums!!

Daily food ration each:

-1 * big freeze dried meal

-1 * soup

-0.5 * packet of noodles/instant pasta

-half a tin of vegetables/taboule/chilli/ravioli

-2 snacks (cereal bars and ALTER ECO biscuits/dried fruit)

Additional food:

-1 box of HARIBO

-2 saucisson

-1 tube of mustard

-1 pot of honey

-4 oranges

-72 pieces of chewing gum?!

-1 * half bottle of Mumm Champagne for the equator

Water

approx. 10 litres required for hydrating freeze dried meals

14 days * 3 litres per person a day * 2 people = 84 litres so 94 litres required ideally

have: 14 litres in bottles, 45 litres in tank so approx 60 litres, hence daily ration of approx 4.5 litres per day and 2 litres drinking water each

Fuel

For the engine our only source of generating power for the batteries.

approx 50 litres (roughly 2/3rds of what we started with) so should be fine!!

Snakes and ladders

Sorry last email was a bit disjointed, lots on with big kite which is doing it’s 100th or so hour over the maximum  wind range recommended by the sailmaker.  This means we are not allowed any mistakes i.e. sail to close to the wind with it or it will probably explode as it did earlier in the race but thankfully not in a dramtic style.

Anyway……..v good news, v much hope to be back in the top ten by the end of the day. Of our easterly gang, Dominic Vittet ATAO Audio Systems is in fine form leading us by 100 miles or so but we’re happy enough with that.  We suspect he will soon slide past Giovanni overall and then he will be the target.  We know we can be quicker than him especially in the last 1500 odd miles of the race to the Brazilian coast, so we will let him decide when to make the call to head west and see how he lines up for the Cape Verdes and then the Doldrums and make our decisions accordingly.  Close to him, sailing a great race, is Anne liardet and Peter Harding 40 Degrees… just ahead of us is the other boat of the quartet, Groupe Partouche.

As for the boats in the far west, well they look dead and buried for now but that could all change very quickly as we are well aware. The bunch in the mid west (around 17W) are in the most interesting position.  They are holding their advantage by being west and are just on the edge of the band of these stronger winds close to the African coast but how far east do they go to get the better breeze, will it come to them? At the moment we are still gaining on them though not as rapidly as we are on those out at (19W). Hummm…….snakes and ladders……….Have a good day all

Nick

Day 11: African firestorm

Day 11 – already?! We are within 20 miles of Western Sahara and plan to keep gybing down the west coast of Africa probably until as far as the top of Mauritania (time to get the Atlas out for a few of you no doubt!)

The guys out west are finally slowing up and we are moving on up the position rankings.  We are just taking the best angle we can get along the African shoreline and gybing back and forth to stay in the best pressure too.

Last night was fairly busy with fisherman and as you get told at the start of the Mini Transat, there are also pirates around and they are nothing like the slightly ‘rose tinted’ impression most of us have of them….anyway enough of that….

At 0800 we are 12th and were also ‘polled’ and hour early, so our actual distance from the lead is around 115 miles, till closing the gap! There is now a whole raft of potential victims within sight too!!

Nick

Surfing in warm waters

Well, 220 miles behind the leaders to 120 miles in 2 days isn’t bad work!! I suspect we are going to lose miles again though as we are off to the African shore line, the wind bends there and additonal promised stength make it too tempting, watch out for Groupe Partouche, they are over there and going well. It looks good for next few days and we should be there by tonight. We had very good transition through Canaries, just west of Fuerte Ventura. Wind going light and now we are sailing in 9 knots of wind and our course is 160 degrees, not ideal but we don’t want to gybe off to the west. Deckman (our routing softward) agrees with our route, which was done separately.

Last night was ace, massive surfing and warm water perfect. It is now HOT, today in boxer shorts only, glad we have some sun cream. Going through our rations later to evaluate just how hungry we are going to be! Water and fuel levels OK at the moment….