The first nine days of Leg 6 were great for MAPFRE; we led the fleet towards the northeast at good speed. But as the wind shifted to the right, we tacked north too early, splitting from the fleet too soon and helping Brunel and Dongfeng to pass us.
There is a 4nm separation now, which is easy to cover as we’ve seen with Dongfeng these last days.
After crossing the Equator, things started not to go so well and difficulties arose. We lost the front pack and that forced us to sail differently. Yesterday, as the others were with their MH0 up, we were sailing with a TWA of 140/138 and our A3.
Even if only 20nm behind, we are in a different breeze.
The seaweed is turning into a nightmare again and we breach once every 10 minutes. It’s really frustrating: you feel that the boat isn’t going fast, it’s not at 100%, and you stop focusing on trimming, worrying that the weed is causing us to sail one or two knots slower.
The last sked came in like a bomb. Alvimedica had passed us. Unhappy faces, and the mood was a little bit down. We peeled to our MH0 to go as fast as possible, heading almost full north.
Jean Luc says that we should “try to be first [he laughs], and that in the next 24 hours we’ll cross an area of squalls while sailing upwind. Then there’s a high pressure, which we’ll cross in a fast reach followed by a bit of downwind. The arrival will be in light winds and that might cause a compression – that’s interesting for us. Now we need to focus in generating a lateral split which helps us reach the front”.
#vamosMAPFRE
Fran