Last night Alex was underway again and was looking calm and positive. He has completed the beginning of his repairs, but he has been slow through the night, showing just 3.5 knots He is lying 8th in the fleet at the moment. However he did say that he preferred to continue to work on the repairs in the forepart of the boat at night as it was less humid. He seemed pretty pleased at progress so far, but he will want to make sure that he has restored the strength to hs boat before entering the Roaring Forties.
His planning has been impressive as he carried the bits he needed amongst his stores to enable enabled him to tackle the difficult work.
The South Atlantic High pressure system has established itself over the leading boats, which, from Alex’s perspective is good news. This leads to light and variable winds with calmer seas which makes Alex’s repairs easier and his competitiors are not racing away from him and creating a huge gap. In 1994 we found a small corridor through these variables on “Enza” during the Jules Verne Trophy and it enabled us to create a lead of 1,100 miles over our competition from Olivier de Kersuason in less than a week.
Most of the fleet had swept through the Doldrums earlier at the Equator, but this system is more frustrating. The best speed showing this morning amongst the front ten boats is 13.7, but only 3 others are making more than 10 knots. Alex is 471 miles behind the leader whose speed is down to 5.9 knots. Sam Davis is still holding 10th place, 548 miles behind the leader but only making 4.8 knots.