A westerly option with poor rewards

“It isn’t going the way we want. We went for the hardest option and ultimately it’s less rapid”: the sentence came from Yannick Bestaven but it could well have come from Giancarlo Pedote and Anthony Marchand, they too favouring the westerly option that hasn’t paid off in the end. Indeed, not only did the expected wind shift not arrive, but on top of that, those on the southerly option were barely slowed in the ridge of high pressure offshore of Gibraltar. As a result, Prysmian Group and the four other boats from the same group have lost out big time on the move. In this way, they’d amassed a deficit of between 250 and 300 miles on the head of the fleet by yesterday afternoon as they all set a course southward, and this distance increased still further in the ensuing hours. The reason for this is that each of them ended up beating into the wind on a heading of 160, which equates to 20° below the optimum course. This Friday morning, they have been relegated to over 325 miles behind the leaders and things aren’t likely to change any time soon as very shortly they will have to cut a path through the high pressure. Put plainly, their progress will be slowed considerably for a few hours whilst their playmates, currently midway between Madeira and the Canaries, will continue to gallop along at full tilt in the trade winds. These trade winds, though still lamenting a bit of structure, are trade winds all the same. That said, there is still a long way to go in this 14^th Transat Jacques Vabre (over 3,000 miles), notably with a passage through the formidable Doldrums. Within this context, the duo on Prysmian Group, which is also flying the flag for Electriciens sans Frontières (Electricians without Borders), is wounded but certainly not sunk!