The 35 Transat Jacques Vabre competitors had a rough and damp first night. A few hours after the start, Dominique Wavre and Michele Paret were dealing with 30-knot winds, sea conditions of between three and four metres and sheets of rain. “We are reaching,” Dominique told us this morning from onboard. “It is noisy as we are going quite fast. We barely slept last night and it was a bit tricky to eat anything, but we are fine and the boat is on top form! We did a sail change off Cherbourg and lost a little bit of time, but the fleet has stayed quite bunched up. It is going to be a very tight race.”
The competitors are expecting a wind shift sometime this afternoon. Once the low-pressure has passed, the wind direction will shift to the north-northeast and the race yachts will track south at high speed into a challenging seaway with cross-waves.
When we last checked, Safran with Marc Guillemot and Yann Elies, racing with a controversial titanium keel fitted last summer, was leading the fleet. Virbac Paprec is lying second and PRB just behind them. Mirabaud is lying 12th, just 28 nm behind the leader.
