Frenchman Jean-Luc van den Heede (Jean-Luc van den Heede), leading to the circumnavigation of lone Golden Globe Race, only a little more than 2000 nautical miles to complete the journey. To arrive in Les Sables-d’olonne (France), where on 1 July this year came the contestants, he may already January 26.
5 Jan van den Heede spent trying for 18 hours to stay South of the 20th parallel of the Northern hemisphere. He worked 18-hour penalty which was received in early November for the use of a satellite phone to communicate with someone, except of the organizing Committee of GGR. Due to an inadvertent navigation errors during this punishment van den Heede three hours “dropped in” to the North latitude and the right broke the rules. But, since after 18 hours, he continued for some time to remain South of 20 latitude due to weak winds, the organizers of the race still felt that the Frenchman worked his fine properly.
Now that all the conventions are met, the path to the finish line for van den Heede would be open, but he has to put up with calm, which was established in the region since January 3. According to the forecast, to move quickly to the home of the French can not, in the best case, up until January 10.
“It is impossible to predict the local winds over a small area, so neither we nor he just doesn’t know what they are. What is clear is that they will be weak. It is much more difficult than to cope even with too strong winds in the southern ocean. It is likely that in the coming days he will sleep less than ever for this trip,” explain the organizers of the GGR.
Meanwhile, Dutchman mark Slats (Slats Mark) coming second in the race, tries to use the delay van den Heede. He is not afraid of any wind of 25 knots or 4.5-meter tall waves.
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The gap between the rivals has been reduced to 313 nm. The next two weeks between them, likely to go hard struggle.
And Slats, and van den Heede run the same Rustler 36. On the one hand, the Frenchman still retains the lead, but his Matmut since the beginning of November severely damaged the mast and he made it clear he was not going to risk it. So Ophen Maverick of the Slats have the advantage of the square sails, but during the voyage they were pretty worn out, and he, too, should be cautious.
Estonian Uku, Randmaa (Uku Randmaa) and the American Kopar Istvan (Istvan Kopar), along South America in third and fourth places in the race fleet, just try to avoid the storms that pass South of them. Kopara warned about the Eastern and North-Eastern winds in the 35-55 knots. Randmaa luck a little more and he can try to use cyclone to advance to the North. On Sunday the speed of his One and All were only a single node.
The only one who still haven’t made it to the Atlantic, remains Finn Tapio Lehtinen (Tapio Lehtinen). It is so far “ahead” of sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who in 1968 191 the day of the race was further away from South America, but jokes asking whether to register a Guinness world record for the slowest circumnavigation.
Lehtinen is also not very lucky with the weather: he needs to move to the North-East to avoid strong storm on January 11, and now the wind, unfortunately, has decided to subside. Coincidentally now Lehtinen is in the same area where a strong storm hit and Jean-Luc van den Heede, and Susie Goodall (Susie Goodall).
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