Slow and frustrating for Ecover in TJV

by Lucy Harwood on 16 Nov 2007 The passage through the Doldrums on the 13th day of the Transat Jacques Vabre race from Le Havre to Bahia has been a slow and frustrating one for Mike Golding and Bruno Dubois on ECOVER 3.

They have struggled with only light winds since early this morning, ghosting along at just six to eight knots at times they have endeavoured to make to the west to cover the chasing pack of five boats which are to their west and within 20 miles of them.

Slightly to the west and closer to the rhumb line Velux 5 Oceans winner Bernard Stamm and Tanguy Cariou have made a big advance on Cheminées Poujoulat, gaining over 70 miles over the last 24 hours and have just taken over first place from ECOVER 3, and leads by four miles.

Cheminées Poujoulat is slightly to the west of ECOVER 3 with a tightly packed group of four boats which includes Foncia (Mich Desjoyeaux and Manu Le Borgne) but has managed to get furthest south of that group. All have come from the west and Cheminées crossed east back across the rhumb line yesterday.

'It is just a bit frustrating and we have a million jobs on the go this afternoon, and we have lost all that lead, so it is not the best of days.' Grimaced Golding this afternoon, 'We have just been going too slow. It is as simple as that. I think that we have had the wrong sail combination up. And we have put that right and I think we will be alright from here on inwards. I mean we are still further south than them, that's our trump card if you like, possibly, and also further to the east. While that is not a benefit here it could be when we get out of the other side. That is kind of new, but if I could go west at the moment I probably would. Let's see how it stacks up the next few hours. We have just made a sail change and might have lost a little bit in that.'

Bruno Dubois revealed the frustrations at midday today: 'We starting off again, we had stopped, we have had a few squalls over night lots of sail changes, GITANA stills has wind from them, good for them, we should be there in the next few hours, We have been manoeuvring since this morning lots of rain but not a lot of wind, another 24 hours in this shit and then it should go better. If we are not out first then we should be happy with the good stuff we have done so far and then we shall see.'

www.mikegolding.com