Pre-Weekend Sailing Update–VDH, TJV…LBJ, JFK (oops, got carried away): “Wrong Way” Jean Luc Van Den Heede (phew, I’ll stick with VDH) is cruising south in the trades, which are a bit weak and a bit slow. He’s in fine form, though, and still about 126 miles ahead of current record holder Philippe Monnet’s comparative track.



Sacre Bleu, Eeet Eeez A Long Way to Go: Monnet is in blue, VDH is in red……

And in the Transat Jacques Vabre the leading trimaran is already through the Doldrums and into the southeast trades, blasting toward Brazil. The Doldrums are a tortuous zone that straddles the Equator, full of either windless holes or knockdown squalls. For shorthanded sailors it is a nightmare because they have to get full sail up when the wind dies, but be ready at a moment’s notice to take it all down if a squall approaches. If the monohullers are slow, they can get a good dunking as the boat is blown flat to the water. If multihullers are slow, they can get a permanent dunking because they’ll be upside down and out of the race. Here’s how Open 60 monohull ECOVER’s Brian Thompson describes the night:

“Last night [co-skipper] Mike [Golding] and I took turns to drive whilst the other one slept and if we saw a cloud approaching we’d wake the other one up to come up on deck. The clouds have killed the wind a bit really, we’ve had a few sprinkles of rain, nothing dramatic though. That’s good for us as we don’t have such a big sail wardrobe anymore. We need to keep a real eye out, though, until daylight, as we have no radar working and the worst time is the first half of the night up to midnight when there is no moon and you can’t spot the squalls. The second half, the moon is up, which means you can see the cloud line better. We did see Biscuits La Trinitaine [an Open 60 trimaran] sail past us, which was surreal!”

Once all the boats are through the Doldrums and into the Southern Hemisphere, they’ll catch a fast ride all the way to Brazil, on strong trade winds south of the Equator. That part of the race often turns into a parade with few passing opportunities. So the Doldrums is the last chance to really shake up fleet positions……



Fast Cruising: What the Trimarans Would like to Be Doing…..

(Photo: Transat Jacques Vabre)