The jibe finaly came and Joerg seems to time it perfectly. The gamble with the high payed of and by jibing he is positioning himself about 20 miles ahead of Bertrand. High is pretty unpredictable animal so the last days must of been pretty nervous for him. Northern position surely promissed better shift on aproach to the finish but as we saw, forecasts were for some time putting the high much more to the south which would make his job much harder. For now he has almost perfect track and as stated in the first post on this blog best boatspeed in the fleet.
Bertrand for now looks solid on second place and Andrea is finaly getting his act together. It seems he will be fighting for the last place of the podium with Pic and Vincent.
My third favourite Nicolas on 719 obviously has technical problems since his boatspeed is way of.
Wind looks to be stable SE which means that positions of forerunners shouldn't change much.
For now it looks like one of the most boring legs in Mini racing is coming to it's end. The only really interesting part is the possibility of having german and italian on the podium of a big offshore singlehanded leg for the first time in history.
Just read below - 719 has no pole. Ups.
RépondreSupprimerA record for crossing Les Sables - The Azores mini is being played ...
RépondreSupprimeris a surprise still possible when crossing the islands or the winner is already known?
RépondreSupprimerImpressive 198, which is an old proto if I understood correctly, at the outpost.
I would not bet on the fact that game is over... !
RépondreSupprimerMoi non plus !
RépondreSupprimerkro439
Saying that is over usually puts the jinx on the guys out there so never good to say that.
RépondreSupprimerBut from the forecast (although I must admit I'm following it pretty superficially) looks like Joerg will have no problems defending his 2-3 hours advantage on Bertrand since it appears the wind will stay at least 10kt (even more most of the time) until the finish.
Keep in mind that except 630, 198 and 716 sailors don't know about positions of their competition and therefore cannot control them.
The only tactial option is maybe the shift from SE to NE in the night from saturday to sunday but then leading skippers will be allready to close to the finish to play with some leverage.
Also the wind shadows from the island will be minimal since wind is blowing more or less paralel with the islands. We had similar situation in 06 and I don't thing any places were changed due to island wind shadows.
It will be interesting to see the fight for 3rd place though. Group can in this case be faster than single boat since they push each other.
And 198 is old boat but won 06 Acores and is still a weapon. In current conditions definetly faster than 630 for example.