Webcam views from Team Cowes : Sam Davies at chart table and Nick Moloney at the helm

Photo Offshore Challenges

Already by mid-morning, more news of the kind you don’t wish to hear was coming through to the Race Office from each of the 3 classes racing : Open 60 Objectif 3, skippered by Spaniard Javier Sanso, dismasted early this morning and has since withdrawn from the race ; Mollymawk, the only remaining 50ft multihull, hit an unidentified object and given extensive flooding, skipper Ross Hobson decided to abandon the race and get the boat into Southampton. Open 50 monohull Labesfal, skippered by Portugese Ricardo Diniz and Brit Mark Taylor, announced their retirement after pulling into Brixham due to a damaged forestay. Lastly, one of the race favourites, Emma Richards and Mike Sanderson on Open 60 Pindar, pulled into Brest Brest #brest today to announce that they, too, were withdrawing from the race due to extensive flooding and subsequent technical problems. A quick number check leaves us with no more class 2 multihulls, 4 Open 50 and 14 Open 60 monohulls. Spaniard Javier Sanso, racing with Charles Hedrich on Objectif 3 sent in his fax at 0823hrs French time : "Broken mast…We’re OK, the hull is OK. I’ll let you know more details later." Objectif 3 was 5 miles NNW of Ushant at the time, and has since faxed again to announce their official retirement from the race. Sanso came 4th on the same boat in the 2001 Transat Jacques Vabre Transat Jacques Vabre #TJV2015 and Objectif 3 was hovering in 12th place this morning before the incident.

Then at 0840hrs French time, British skipper Emma Richards telephoned the Race Office to announce that they were pulling into Brest Brest #brest due to a chain of unfortunate equipment failures on board. Pindar recorded 35 knots of wind in their area and the boat was about 25 miles from Camaret. The boat docked in Brest at 1230 French time and soon after Emma reluctantly confirmed that Pindar was retiring from the race due to extensive flooding inside the boat when the cockpit hose drain blew off and 3,000 litres of water ended up inside the boat, which knocked out the auto-pilot and electronics. "It is a massive disappointment, particularly because in all the races I have competed in over the past four years with Pindar we have only had one previous retirement. However, the point of acquiring the new boat is to try and win races, and due to all the problems we have had on-board, we are just not in a position to compete in this race." Pindar had climbed to 7th place in the fleet by the end of yesterday just 30 miles from the leader.

British duo Ross Hobson and Andi Newman also alerted the Race Office this morning that Mollymawk had unfortunately hit an unidentified floating object, which has caused the front compartment to flood. "The hole is 1ft in diameter, we must have hit something, but the rest of the boat is okay, we have decided to slowly limp across the Channel towards Southampton as the weather will not allow us to make port in France."

Labesfal stopped in Dartmouth with a mast problem last night and this afternoon Mark Taylor officially announced their retirement. "Labesfal suffered damage to her forestay which potentially threatened the safety of the rig. Given further forecasts of Force 10 winds and the fact that we could not get our rig repaired in one day and restart in order to complete the course within 7 days of the first Open 60 monohull, we regretfully decided to retire for seamanlike reasons. However, we shall not forget our fantastic start - 2^nd over the line out of the 50’s !"

Other events of the night included several pit stops - currently in 4th place still, Vincent Riou and Jeremie Beyou on PRB made a slick pit stop at Camaret in order to pick up a new staysail, as theirs had ripped during the first night of the race. "We had only a scrap of the sail left hanging from the top of the halyard" Jeremie Beyou explained on the telephone this morning. "We stopped in Camaret at 2300hrs for one hour to pick up a new staysail. We were surprised that we left well-positioned still after this pit-stop - which is good for us then !"

Adecco stopped in Roscoff to repair a steering problem and has since restarted, Open 50 Défi Vendéen has pulled in to Saint Malo to repair their bowsprit ; Mike and Robert Birch on TIR Groupé have not yet left Dartmouth this morning. However, Loire-Atlantique has left Cherbourg at 0830hrs French time this morning after repairing their mainsail. And finally Atlantic Nature (Caseneuve/Houdet) arrived at 2050 last night at Cherbourg after dismasting yesterday.

It seems that the weather is cleaning up on the Monohull fleet, but a lot of these problems can also be attributed to technical problems that are likely to crop up at any time during racing with these hi-tech machines. Bernard Stamm has just reported in that Cheminées Poujoulat/Armor Lux has had major ballast problems which has caused their boatspeed to drop in the upwind conditions, but they are bearing their bad luck with patience.

On the other hand, there are still a good crop of top boats still fighting it out, and doing their own clean up on board after the worst of the bad weather. The top half of the fleet are now crossing the Bay of Biscay and the weather forecast below will be bringing more of the same headwinds and heavy seas in the next two days. Clear leaders Mike Golding and Brian Thompson on Ecover had only to report one broken batten in their mainsail, which attributed to a slower speed this morning, but are otherwise racing at 100% : "We had the mainsail down this morning to replace a broken batten, inevitably with a new boat there’s the odd ping - given the conditions we’re not going to get away without some small failures on the boat. Now we’re at 100% again. We’re making good progress, but the first rule is to take care of the boat, we’ve got to arrive to finish. The sea is still rough but the wind has eased to 17 - 18 knots."

Alex Thomson, the 29 year old co-skipper on Sill was able to look at the horizon for once and comment on what lies ahead as they creep up behind Ecover just 12 miles in their wake : "The weather forecast is for more strong headwinds. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 12hrs as the top boats follow the same route and try to get some Westing in, all except Virbac, they are heading directly South. Ecover certainly has legs upwind but were slower this morning, we’re happy with our position and we’ve made good progress in comparison."

Mary Ambler

• WEATHER FORECAST

 Today : The monohulls are really in the Atlantic now, the wind has temporarily shifted to the Westgiving 20 -30 knot winds to allow the boats to head Southwards. However, for the following hours and especially at the end of the day, the wind will rotate towards the SW then South and ease to 15 - 20 knots. So the fleet will have to tack at some point in order to make some Westing in their route, which will most likely happen during the evening. The sea has calmed for the time being but will certainly come up again overnight.
 Tuesday : The Southerly flux will strengthen to 20 - 30 knots and the sea will become quite rough but at least the wave pattern will be more regular with crests reaching 8 metres at the end of the day. There’s no escape from the Southerly wind which is dominant over a great part of the East Atlantic area, so the boats will get a pounding again in these tough conditions.
 Wednesday : For the monohulls, the conditions remain the same with a strong Southerly blow of 20 - 30 knots but stronger gusts. For the multihulls the weather will be much more manageable in the English Channel, with a 15 - 20 knot Southerly wind over Le Havre and smoother seas.

• POSITIONS at 14:44 hrs GMT 03/11/03

MONOHULL OPEN 60

Pos. / Boat / Name / Latitude / Longitude / Speed / Hdg / DTF / DFL
 1 ECOVER 45 36.88’ N 6 45.36’ W 8.9 202 3936.6m
 2 SILL 45 57.56’ N 6 58.32’ W 9.2 186 3949.1m 12.5m
 3* VIRBAC 46 00.60’ N 5 52.38’ W 11.7 192 3950.3m 13.7m
 4 PRB 46 01.64’ N 5 57.24’ W 9.8 189 3977.1m 40.5m
 5 TEAM COWES 46 32.92’ N 6 20.24’ W 10.2 197 3991.4m 54.8m 

* 1200hrs GMT

OPEN 50 MONOHULLS 
 1 STORAGETEK 47 39.72’ N 5 17.76’ W 8.0 174 4072m
 2 HELLOMOTO 48 33.88’ N 5 06.68’ W 7.9 192 4121.2m 49.2m

 abandoned CIMENT ST LAURENT
 abandoned OBJECTIF 3
 abandoned PINDAR
 abandoned MOLLYMAWK
 abandoned ATLANTIC NATURE
 abandoned LABESFAL

 Mike Golding (Ecover) : : "This morning’s been a bit slow because we’ve been sorting everything out after the bad weather. We had the mainsail down this morning to replace a broken batten, inevitably with a new boat there’s the odd ping - given the conditions we’re not going to get away without some small failures on the boat. Now we’re at 100% again. We’re making good progress, but the first rule is to take care of the boat, we’ve got to arrive to finish. The sea is still rough but the wind has eased to 17 - 18 knots. I am just about to make a good English fry up - nothing like bacon and eggs to start the day off with !"

 Alex Thomson (Sill) : "Right now we’re just cleaning up the boat after the storm conditions and are still sailing carefully as the weather forecast is for more strong headwinds, we’ve only unrolled the staysail this morning. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 12hrs as everyone except Virbac tries to get some Westing in, but those guys are heading directly South. Ecover certainly has legs upwind but were slower this morning, we’re happy with our position and we’ve made good progress in comparison.

 Conrad Humphreys (Hellomoto) : "We’ve had a shocker - my lap top has been destroyed and some instruments are down, we’re 20m from Ushant on a heading of about 200 degrees. We’re trying to slow the boat down so she doesn’t launch herself so much on the waves. It’s pretty tough out here and with no computer we’re forced to rely on paper charts - I’ll be getting the sextant out soon ! The worst conditions we’ve had were this morning, 45 knots and the most incredible waves I’ve ever seen - 18 - 20ft high, it was fantastic !

But we’re frustrated as we can’t push too hard and the boat hates going up wind, we’ve also lost 3 stanchions on one side so we’re having to walk carefully on deck. Between Paul and myself we’ve had about 2 hours sleep since the start and have been in survival mode, eating energy bars and chocolate when we can, no real routine to follow. The sea is still up now, but the wind has eased to 18 knots, we’ve got 1 reef and the solent up. So we have to clean the boat up now, there was quite a lot of water on board and so things got a bit messy and wet !"

 Nick Moloney : "The wind is down to around 16 knots, though there is still a big swell, we are sailing at 11 knots with 1 Reef and the Solent [the same rig as at the start] we should be under full sail later as the wind is forecast to drop to 12 knots, though it’ll be back to the reefed sail on Wednesday - we are in for another 35knts upwind - it wasn’t like this the last time we sailed this race !!

We haven’t managed our food quite as well as would have liked - snacking mainly on Energy Bars and some home made quiche that slipped aboard as we left the dock on Saturday morning - the conditions were just too much for making up any of our freeze dried food, but now with a 30 hour window we will eat and rest to prepare for the next round !! The most imporatant thing in the windy stuff is to keep the boat together, and heading in the right direction, even small amounts of damage can add up to a major headache, or worse having to make a pitstop which gets more difficult logistically as we head down the course."