It was cold, dark, wet, and windy on Monday evening when they ripped across the official record attempt start line between the Créac'h lighthouse on Ouessant Island, France and the Lizard Point lighthouse in Cornwall, England.
20+ knot winds made for a bumpy ride for the sailors in the boat’s enclosed cockpit, but they have been making excellent progress since then, with top speeds up around 37 knots, and by Thursday morning in Europe had covered over 1,800 nautical miles.
Having passed west of the Canary Islands yesterday afternoon – happily after successfully avoiding any unfortunate encounters with one of the estimated 50 containers lost from a cargo ship in the area last week – Coville’s men are now in discussion with their shoreside routing team – headed up by France’s Philippe Legros and including American meteorologist Chris Bedford and British navigator Simon Fisher – about how best to navigate their way past the Cape Verde archipelago.
According to an audio message from Pierre Leboucher, despite the fast running, life on board Sodebo has been relatively comfortable for the sailors who are in good spirits and enjoying the rapidly climbing temperatures as they push south.
Having left France bundled up in thermals and full foul weather gear, Leboucher says the sailors are: "almost ready to take off our fleeces."
Back ashore, uppermost in the routers’ minds right now is keeping the French flying multihull away from the lighter winds of a large high pressure system to the west of its route and avoiding the worst of the elongated wind shadows thrown by the towering land masses of some of the Cape Verde islands.
Currently they are favouring a passage that will see the sailors pick their way through the scattered islands. Although this will likely require a series of gybes – not a simple feat on a monster multihull like this one – it could enable the team to take advantage of a wind acceleration around the island of Fogo in the south of the archipelago.
It’s a year since the Sodebo crew – made up of Coville, along with Benjamin Schwartz, Frédéric Denis, Pierre Leboucher, Léonard Legrand, Guillaume Pirouelle and Nicolas Trousel – last attempted a Jules Verne Trophy record attempt. Back then they went head-to-head with another French crew aboard François Gabart’s SVR-Lazartigue Ultim. Both attempts were aborted due to technical issues/gear failure.
The Sodebo Ultim is back on the water after a quick turnaround by the team’s shore crew after Coville and Schwartz finished second in the 17th edition of the Transat Café L’Or from Le Havre to Guadeloupe.
Once past Cape Verde, the team is believed to be aiming for an equator crossing at a longitude point somewhere between 27 and 28 degrees west.
This morning the Sodebo crew held a lead of just over 400 nautical miles over the equivalent pace of the current record holders – Francis Joyon’s French crew aboard IDEC Sport – who in 2017 set the benchmark time of 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds.
