Transat Update: After bashing through strong headwinds and rain for the first day, the 36 skippers (there has been one retirement, a 60-foot tri that had a daggerboard snap off) of the singlehanded transat race got a brief respite as they sailed through a ridge of high pressure off Ireland. The racing is intense (click here for reports), with the two lead trimarans match racing each other through the night, just 200 meters apart. Here’s how Thomas Coville on Sodebo, described the experience of racing through the dense fog the fleet encountered:

“A strange atmosphere, like sailing through soft cotton. The feeling of speed is intense… with nothing visual to register on [there has been under 300m visibility] except our wake, we seemed to be flying along in 14-15 knots of wind and a gentle, long swell.”

Most of the skippers have survived on just a few hours of sleep, mostly in very brief naps. Here’s what race originator Blondie Hasler had to say about sleep:

“A trained singlehander can maintain full mental and physical efficiency for an unlimited number of days without ever sleeping for more than 20 minutes at a time-often only half a minute-but these catnaps must be taken at frequent intervals throughout 24 hours, and must be started as soon as he leaves port, long before he begins to feel tired.”

Uh, okay Blondie. However they do it, the skippers better get rested up, though. There is a massive depression spreading across the Atlantic, which is set to hammer the fleet later this week. Here’s the long-range forecast: carnage…



Yves Parlier’s Radical “Hydroplaneur”: “Alors, if the storm takes one mast, at least I have another…”