Vendée Fleet To Cross With Global Challengers

Day 54 and yesterday Nick MOLONEY on SKANDIA spoke with Vendee race control telling them, ‘it was great to cross the Dateline – puts you in the right frame of mind to finish – before that, you really feel like you are half way around the world and going backwards. Now, I feel I am just get closer and closer.’

At the latest sked, SKANDIA continues to maintain seventh, but dropping back to be 560 nautical miles behind VIRBAC (Jean Pierre DICK) as he sails away in the storm. Nick’s Nearest competitor behind him, excluding PROFORM (Mark THIERCELIN), is ARCELOR (Joe SEETEN), which is 547 miles to the west.

SKANDIA has hung onto the wind longer than expected, but Nick is likely to fall out of the back of the low pressure system ahead of him shortly. This same system, 1000 miles to his south east, is giving VMI (S’bastien JOSSE), TEMENOS (Dominique WAVRE) and VIRBAC a real pasting.

TEMENOS reported 50 to 55 knots of wind this morning, and even the vastly experienced Wavre explained that he was in ‘survival mode’.

Skandia is in a relatively complex situation between a high pressure system to his north east and two areas of low pressure. One way or another, the next Southern Ocean depression will swing along at some point and take him with it to the east, Cape Horn some 3,500 miles away.

At the front of the race, the leaders expect to be at Cape Horn by Monday. BONDUELLE (Jean LE CAM) continues to hold a substantial 194 mile lead, and second place PRB (Vincent RIOU) has re-extended his lead on ECOVER (Mike GOLDING) to 85 miles, as Golding was forced to gybe to the north-east.

The pit stop update: VM MATERIAUX (Patrice CARPENTIER) is still working away in a little bay in the south east of Tasmania; repair work nearing completion.

Marc THIERCELIN had ‘the worst 48 hours possible,’ as he made his way in steep seas, but now in light airs, towards Christchurch (east coast of New Zealand), he will make a decision as to whether to accept external assistance or not (which would disqualify him from the race).

Back on SKANDIA, Nick was quite happy to hear that 300 miles on his bow are the Global Challenge fleet, themselves racing round the world – but the ‘wrong’ way (east to west, against the prevailing winds). They are on their way to Wellington having just crossed the Southern Ocean from Cape Horn.

Rankings as of Friday, December 31, 2004 – 04h00 GMT (05:00 AM FR)