Light southerly winds and tricky tides have provided a challenging scenario for the leaders in La Solitaire URGO Figaro as they battled to round the isolated Wolf Rock to the southwest of Land’s End this afternoon writes W M Nixon. It was something of a melee, but Scottish sailor Alan Roberts – one of the Marcus Hutchinson academy – did well out of it, moving rapidly up the top ten to be in contention for third place as the long cross-Channel leg to the turn point off northwest Brittany began with a beat.
That beat may soon become a reach, but whatever the wind direction takes up, for the time being it doesn’t look like there’ll be a lot of it. It’s becoming one slow race after two days and five hours since the start, and heading into the third night the current leader Sebastien Simon racing Bretagne CMB Performance has managed to get 0.2 of a mile ahead of former leader Corentin Douget.
With Tom Dolan now re-positioning himself to St Brieuc for the second leg (starting Sunday) after his forced retiral with a spreader adrift, Ireland’s sole representative Joan Mulloy has been finding better speed to get herself west of the Lizard Point, and the most recent postings show her at 26th out of 36 starters.
Race tracker here