Archives: Log

Dear command post / Could you please obtain information from the competent astronomy authorities on important sky events at the moment / We can observe something like a star exploding beside Cassiopeia…/
You know as much as we do about our progress – no comment. Best wishes, Yves. And the other hyped-up sportsmen.

Hello. I think that we’ll go over the Cape Town line by midday / 21 days 20 hours since Brest / But above all under 11 days since the equator/ Which I think is the record for this leg / Not bad when we were 4 days behind Blake at the equator / Now only 2 left / The mood on board is good / We see that the trouble we’ve gone to has served a purpose / See you soon / We’re thinking of your and all your unknown descendants / on board Sport-Elec / Olivier //

For the office
Didn’t manage to radio last night / A lot of strain on the machine / On us as well / As soon as it calms a little I’ll start again / Next time we should have a phone / It takes too much time / A phone????? / What’s the world coming to /
Air 2°C, water 2°C / No risk of falling asleep at the helm / Eyes tired from looking at the radar / Tension / Stress not to mention fear /
The crew is otherwise holding up / I can’t help feeling very moved when I think back to the one on Lyonnaise, miserable with exhaustion / Oilskins torn / Faces swollen with cold / With fatigue / And today, in the same context, I’m suddenly proud of what we five have done and am happy.
Olivier //

When you pass the Horn you know that the hell of ice and violent winds is practically over / You also know, above all, that now you have every chance of staying alive / Something that is never obvious in the south and even less so on the dates when we went through / Then you have the Horn times that for me are very important because in extreme conditions there are moments when continuing to go fast demands enormous concentration from all, great maritime astuteness and chance. Most of the time, myths are disappointing but in 5 world tours I’ve never been disappointed / The south Indian and the south Pacific embody the ocean’s wonder, everything there is brutal, quick, dangerous, we find the sea in astonishing states / Terrorizing sometimes but always incredible / It’s not just my will, it’s the courage and determination of a tenacious crew / I’d told them that it’d be blow after blow in this venture badmouthed by connoisseurs / And who knows? There’ve only been 2 multihulls in the world to go below 60° South, Blake once and me twice (…)

Have dismounted the boom and fixed up the gooseneck / Everything’s a bit tired, but the resistance is incredible, with a mainsail that’s done more than 50,000 miles still in perfect condition / A little panic when we found cracks under the arms of the floats / We scratched up to the carbon and it seems that the structure hasn’t suffered too much / We’ve protected the scratches with Sika, it looks a little like an eyebrow arch the day after a rugby match, but it should hold until we arrive / It’s my 19th passage through the Doldrums and I think it’s the worst / We have more than 12 telexes per day on getting out of this hole, the North Atlantic is really in a mess this year / We don’t trust the future weather forecasts / Our lead is puny capital in the face of what might await us and for now we’re doing 310, which won’t exactly get us home.

We don’t really have courses of action, we don’t really know what the other side of the Atlantic holds for us and we can’t look further ahead than 24 hours / It’s a bit hard to see the beautiful miles notched up in the south melt before our eyes. When things are predictable we can have a tactic, but when they’re unpredictable we can only submit. / In terms of sailing things are interesting, we’re not too tense, but not relaxed / Just a little nervous at the uncertainty / In short, we’re like calves before the butcher…/ Olivier //

Bruno Peyron:
“A really technical first section of the race: it was necessary to anticipate and constantly play with wind angles that weren’t always favorable. Given these conditions, our “scores” since the start are very satisfactory. It’s frustrating, when we know Orange’s potential, not to give free rein to the boat’s speed. But we have to focus on trajectories to avoid pitfalls. We’ve been concentrating a great deal on the evolution of weather in the next two to three days but we can’t help observing the enormous Saint Helena High stuck on our route…”

Yann Eliès :
“It took me two days to really lose my earthling’s bearings. I’m now completely in sync with my watch, the one including the Bretons Hervé Jan, Sébastien Josse and Yves Le Blévec. The boat is really reassuring and Bruno is the ‘boss’ on board. He’s very discreet and always intervenes aptly for a change in direction or sails…”

Pushed far west for a week by Saint Helena’s High, Orange is struggling with a new and very similar high-pressure zone, a “cousin” of the former that is developing far south in a normally windy zone where Bruno Peyron was expecting anything except to be confronted by a rough sea and weak winds. Orange continues to head east, parallel to the depression systems of the Forties. Good Hope is approaching… the door of the Great South is yawning open. Still on track to set a reference time between Ushant and the southern point of Africa, the maxi catamaran Orange is slowly escaping the anticyclone’s clutches… “It’s Sunday in the South, the sea’s a little grey, heavy, three to four meters of swell,” reports Bruno Peyron. “The sun, a little white, is piercing through a low sky… Around us, we can see petrels, and sometimes, the arresting, fascinating vision of a ‘jumbo,’ the heavy, majestic silhouette of an albatross…”

Eric Mas, Météo-Consult:
“This weather is really very complicated. Orange is crossing an exceptionally complex situation, between an anticyclone and depressions. As long as the sea is not lined up in the right direction, Orange cannot expect the depressions to evolve as we would like. A race against the clock is on, to avoid the catamaran once again coming up against very strong, badly oriented winds in three days’ time.”

Bruno Peyron:
“It’s been a little better in the last two to three hours. We’re heading east-southeast at around fifteen knots, with peaks of 20! Not bad with a staysail and three reefs! We need to go down towards the Fifties, and pass below a tropical depression that is developing ahead of us at 43 degrees south. The sea is still choppy. It’s hell for the helmsman who keeps on getting hit on the head by lumps of frozen sea…”

31.2 knots of instant speed at midday, clocking up 429 miles on the counter in the last 24 hours: the maxi catamaran Orange is chomping up the miles while gliding due east along the 46 degree south latitude. Currently sailing with a staysail and a two-reef mainsail, it’s now 930 miles from the longitude of Cape Leeuwin (southwest point of Australia). We sense great relief in the voices of Bruno Peyron and Gilles Chiorri on the radio shift of the day. Indeed, the maxi catamaran Orange has found – finally! – classic sailing conditions in this temperamental Great South, in other words downwind conditions of 30 to 35 knots and a calmer sea pushing it from behind. “We have a regular flow that is going to allow us to go fast,” declares the skipper. “But above all it’s going to continue to help calm the sea. This will do a lot of good to everyone, the men as well as the boat!”