The morning after the first night at sea on leg three of the La Solitaire Du Figaro Cork's David Kenefick is in 14th place as the fleet of 37 Figaros race across the West of Brittany and past the Glenan Islands on their way to Belle Ile writes Marcus Hutchinson.
The start yesterday afternoon in 18 knots of breeze from the North East gave spectacular sailing conditions and it wasn't long before the whole fleet was racing at speed downwind with spinnakers up. The North Easterly is forecast to stay with the fleet for most of the next couple of days with just a few transitions in and out of sea breeze which will need to be handled carefully.
David has had a solid first part of the race and will be happy to be still in the mix this morning. Overnight the lead has gone to Britain's Sam Goodchild as the fleet passed through the Raz de Sein and past Audierne and PenMarch.
The fleet will leave the coast past Belle Ile this afternoon and head out into the middle of the Bay of Biscay to a weather buoy 150 miles offshore.
This buoy will prove to be tricky to find as it is moored in 4000 metres of water and has a mooring chain of nearly 12000 metres which means it 'wanders' a bit! The long term forecasts, the only information the skippers can leave with, are still fairly vague on exactly what the wind will do and hence it will be difficult to make strategies other than conservative ones for this leg. For now it is about speed and getting as much sleep as possible so as to be able to think straight when the important decisions need to be made.
