Lining up for the Doldrums

Mapfre turns on the afterburners in the Barcelona World Race

Images courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems and PredictWind

Positions at 0330

If Foncia has been dropping back on race leader Virbac Paprec 3 over the last 48 hours, then the team has come clean this morning about why this is - at some point, probably on Sunday, they suffered a collision with an unidentified floating object which wiped out their sacrificial bow. It is unclear exactly when this happened nor whether the crash bulkhead in the bow of the boat has been compromised, although we may find out more this afternoon. Nonetheless Desjoyeaux's company Mer Agitée is manufacturing a replacement bow which will be flown down to Brazil and fitted when the boat makes a pitstop in Recife probably on Friday. 

Meanwhile the boats continue to make good speed in the Trades, Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez on fifth placed Mapfre having logged the highest 24 hour run at the latest sched with 424 miles.

At present all the crews are looking ahead to the Doldrums to establish where the best place to cross might be. Wind satellite radar images show the Doldrums to be on a skewed, slightly ENE-WSW axis, at around 8-10°N on the African side of the Atlantic, around 2°N on the Brazilian side. Given their trajectory, the boats look set to cross at around 30°W where the Doldrums starts at around 4°N with the southeasterly trades of the South Atlantic not properly filling in until around 3°S. Given the orientation of the Doldrums, boats may turn to the southeast in order to cross them via the shortest possible route. At present Virbac Paprec 3 has just over 300 miles to go before she enters the Doldrums, so sometime tomorrow morning.

Generally over the last 24 hours the ever changing concertina that is the Barcelona World Race fleet has been expanding again, with the exception of smokin' Mapfre which has reduced her deficit on the race leader from 296 to 260 miles and their sistership Pachi Rivero and Tonio Piris on Mapfre's sistership Renault ZE which has pulled back 3 miles on Virbac Paprec 3.

At the back of the fleet, the boats that are coming back into the Atlantic from the coast of Africa have suffered but it is turning into a yacht race with less than 100 miles separating the final four boats. It seems likely that at some point today Hugo Boss may no longer be the back marker...