Hello from the North, 

The sea and wind conditions are rather pleasant at the moment, even though you have to be very focused to get the boat trimmed nicely and working at her best. 

Changing room aboard Prysmian Group

" The little trip up north will at least have enabled me to validate the clothing supplied by our partner Helly Hansen, which I intend to take on the Vendée Globe. I’ve changed my clothing on numerous occasions – sub-layer, jacket, foulies, to get a good feel for all the products. As a result, it’s nice to be dry in what is a fairly hostile part of the world for man, especially so as a solo sailor on a race boat. 

I am just a few nautical miles away from rounding the UNESCO waypoint and then I’ll set a course for the south and the Gallimard waypoint, which is now just slightly below the latitude of Les Sables d’Olonne some 400 miles from the Atlantic coast." 

Jacques Caraës, Race Director of the Vendée – Arctique – Les Sables d’Olonne: “By repositioning the Gallimard mark, Race Management and the weather cell are simply trying to refine the ETAs (estimated time of arrival). A high pressure system is settling in over the Azores, which the back runners might well have become ensnared in if the initial positioning had been retained. Positioning the mark at 46°20N – 015°W enables us to pretty much stick to the initial format of around 12 days.”