Day 27, Thursday October 22, 1998

Isabelle made 5 miles on the leading Thiercelin. He seemed to recognize the necessity to cover her more than to keep closing on Cape Town and dropped a little off wind to gain more speed. Isabelle nicely described the whole situation in her e-mail: "Okay, Marc is making his move (he's returning to a longitude close to PRB's.) In any case, he's going much faster than if he were close-hauled. So am I, but not so dramatically. Actually, I would have preferred it if he hadn't figured out what was happening, but he isn't stupid: the high pressure system will block our path in two days. The only solution: go around it, by heading west and south. Giovanni should be in good shape... The hard part will be to pick the right longitude: too far east and you get becalmed, too far west and you go a longer distance for nothing... It isn't going to be easy. Yesterday was a bit of a struggle. Behind the front, the wind suddenly rose to 45 knots, while all of the other clouds were just puffy."

Isabelle Austissier

"The boat, which was under mainsail and jib, got backwinded and knocked down, with all three spreader bars in the water... It took a lot of crawling around to get things straightened out, with a triple reef and a storm jib. I spent the rest of the day beating, slightly off close-hauled. Anyway, we aren't there yet, and we're taking the longest possible route..."

Golding, holding onto third position, also had a hard time: "I feel very tired this morning. The last few days have been very hard on the boat and me. We are sailing through a weather front, which is attached to a low pressure that has split the South Atlantic high in two. The conditions are very demanding. Frequent squalls, sometimes prolonged, instant huge wind shifts, holes in the breeze, rain and very bad short seas have really kept the pressure on."

Golding's Team Group 4

"This morning is as bad as ever, though perhaps a little more stable. By 0500Z I was washed out. I had changed to every shift and turn of the breeze and had to concede defeat. I slept for an hour, having left the boat with a double reefed main and staysail set, making at least some progress towards CT. When I woke and went on deck I found that both the jib sheets had tugged apart, the spectra strop attaching them to the clew and that both the second, and on inspection the first, reef strops had chafed through. As I began sorting it out -- 30kts of wind came in as quick as a flash."

"This front is stalled, prevented from moving by the high pressure to the east of it. I am now trying to get south away from it. It's just too disruptive. I also want to maintain my right-hand position as it looks as though Josh is moving to try to do the same and Giovanni, although a long way back in terms of distance to go, has positioned himself with the benefit of having seen our track abruptly halted. It's not impossible for him to sail around the whole lot of us."

Soldini's Fila © Foto Billy Black

In Class II, Brad Van Liew and J.P. Mouligne swapped positions again. Van Liew today reported a problem with the fuel system of his diesel engine, which provides his onboard power. It looks like the fuel feeding pipe was positioned incorrectly in the fuel tank and with the boat heeling on starboard side the pipe was sucking air instead of diesel.

Jean-Pierre experienced a terrifying problem. While sitting in his cabin, he suddenly lost all the reading on his instruments and the autopilot went dead at the same time. Fortunately the conditions were mild and by balancing the sails and tying the tiller down with a line, he was able to keep Cray Valley roughly on course for a few minutes at a time. After a quick contact with his base he was able to sort out the disaster. His wind instrument indicator on top of the mast was shorting out the whole electrical system. He disconnected it and the autopilot and instruments went back on immediately. He wrote: "The race goes on. Last night I could see Balance Bar's lights to windward. I am pressing on and going south; the next 2 weeks will be intense..."

Mouligne's Cray Valley © Foto Billy Black

Garside, in third place, was losing miles to JP and Brad for six straight days at such an alarming rate that he went back from the front of Class 2 by 275 miles. Robin Davie got to only 205 miles behind him and even Yazykov had gained on him 300 miles over the same time period.

Garside © Foto Billy Black

Garside wrote: "Time will tell if I can pull back the miles. At the moment I'm pushing along at a respectable 10 knots and heading due south. But in doing so I only cut 64 miles off my distance to Cape Town in the last 24hours."

Yazykov pulled himself in front of Hunter, who is now 30 miles back and rounds up Class II. But he is not the last. Over 250 miles behind him is Class I competitor Konioukhov.

Positions:

Class 1

Class 2

Copyright © Richard Konkolski
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