Speed - constant mid-30s

Banque Populaire eating up the Southern Ocean on the Jules Verne Trophy attempt

Chart above courtesy of Expedition/Tasman Bay Navigation Systems and PredictWind

Fully into the strong 30 knots northerlies, so the Loick Peyron-skippered Banque Populaire maxi trimaran has been showing what she can do over the last 24 hours, her speed regularly into the mid-30s with the result that she has nearly doubled her lead over Jules Verne Trophy record holder Groupama 3, now 862 miles ahead.

With the wind having now backed into the northwest, so Banque Populaire is onto a course of around 110° as she skirts the southwest side of the high, while attempting to stay for as long as possible in the strongest northwesterlies. However she is already 120 miles south of Groupama 3's track and if she continues this course she looks set to be more than 250 miles south tomorrow morning when she crosses the Greenwich meridian. As mentioned yesterday she is sailing into an ice zone and so the crew will be keen to get north out of harm's way for any sort of collision on a boat travelling at the speeds she is, will be potentially fatal.

To watch today is to see where the 40m trimaran's maximum 24 hour run peaks - already it is up 793 miles, ie almost 200 more miles covered in a day than the VO70 record, although some way off Banque Populaire's personal best (and the outright world record) of 908 miles or 37.84 knots. 

With the brisk favourable conditions set to continue over this weekend it looks Banque Populaire will pass the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope on Sunday morning, in other words in around 12 days since she started. In comparison Groupama 3 took 13 days 8 hours and 47 minutes to pass the Cape on her 2008 Jules Verne attempt.