Canaries astern

“It’s been a fairly complicated night. We haven’t slept, but it was worth it as we’ve regained the two places we lost yesterday and now we’re really happy with where we’re at, especially given that we’re hoping to be able to steal a bit of a march by latching onto the wind before the others”, commented Martin Le Pape this Sunday, after traversing the Canaries archipelago, where they opted to slip between the islands of Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura, leaving the East Canaries TSS to the east. “We’re fully focused on getting the boat making headway. We’re preparing for a long passage on port tack with a NE’ly breeze, which will take us down to the African coast, where the wind is set to build a bit, even though it will remain pretty wheezy”, added the co-skipper of Prysmian Group, back up into 7th place within the IMOCA fleet in the Transat Jacques Vabre. A transatlantic during which, like the class’ other races, they have various means of on-board communication at their disposal. “We have a Fleet, which enables us to connect to a communication network via satellite. In this way, we can make calls to shore and benefit from data to send emails and use WhatsApp, Skype and many other devices. Obviously it’s not a fibre connection. It’s not possible to download 1 Giga of film as it’s very slow, and it’s important to know that all the means of communication are very expensive”, explained Giancarlo, who has two different systems aboard in case of a fault, together with an Iridium in the survival container. “It’s there with a spare battery in the event that we’re forced to abandon the boat. It’s a system which operates with different satellites to the Fleet and obviously it’s an important safety element”.