Seul à bord de son maxi-trimaran IDEC, Francis Joyon a coupé la ligne de départ de la Route de la Découverte, à Cadix (Espagne), Le mercredi 6 février à 12 heures, 50 minutes 25 secondes TU. Direction San Salvador (Bahamas) via les Canaries. Objectif : améliorer son propre record de 2008, à savoir parcourir les 3884 milles en moins de 9 jours, 20 heures, 32 minutes et 23 secondes. Il doit donc couper la ligne de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique avant le samedi 16 février à 9 heures 21 minutes 48 secondes.
Ce soir, Francis Joyon se trouve à moins de 600 milles de l’arrivée avec plus de 300 milles sur le temps de référence « En 2008, j’étais parvenu à passer sous la barre des 10 jours ; j’aimerais cette année arriver avant le 9ème jour ». Alors que le maxi-trimaran IDEC dispose encore aujourd’hui, et malgré l’encombrante présence d’un vaste anticyclone qui freine depuis hier sa progression, d’environ 320 milles d’avance, Francis Joyon précise posément le niveau de ses ambitions. Heureux de sa course pourtant entamée avec un minimum d’analyse météo dans la foulée immédiate du convoyage entre son port d’attache, la Trinité-sur-Mer, et la ligne de départ de Cadix, le skipper d’IDEC se félicite au terme du 7ème jour de folle cavalcade d’un scénario pour l’heure parfaitement maîtrisé. Le choix d’une route! plus sud qu’en 2008 lui a permis d’aligner, une fois les Canaries passées, de belles journées à plus de 500 milles. Comme à l’accoutumée sur ce difficile parcours, l’atterrissage sur les Bahamas s’avère compliqué à souhait
Francis Joyon is in the process of successfully completing his latest attempt at the Columbus Route. On Thursday lunchtime, he only had 280 miles left to sail before crossing the finishing line in San Salvador. After being slowed down yesterday, IDEC was back up to speeds of around 20 knots and should smash her own record taking the time to under 9 days. They are due to finish tomorrow (Friday).
On what is more or less the direct route with a little less than 300 miles to sail, the maxi trimaran IDEC has managed to increase her speed again to around 20 knots over the past few hours. After carrying out a lot of manoeuvres yesterday – as planned – to deal with the areas of calm to the south of a high-pressure area, Francis Joyon managed to keep around half of the lead he had built up before, in other words around 200 of the 400 miles. That should be enough to ensure that he does more than simply achieve the goal he set himself at the start in Cadiz exactly 8 days ago, when he aimed to shave ten hours or so off the record.
In the end, the gain is likely to be around twice what he had planned, as IDEC is due to cross the finishing line as early as tomorrow morning (Friday 15th February). In any case long before time runs out if he wants to improve on his own record set back in 2008 on this route (9 days and 20 hours), as to do that IDEC would simply have to finish before 0821hrs GMT on Saturday morning.
Lowering the bar to less than 9 days…without any routing assistance
“If all goes smoothly, I should finish some time tomorrow morning (Friday),” Francis Joyon confirmed by phone this Thursday, « Even if I still have to deal with some final areas of calm. Having said that, I have a bit more wind than the charts were showing, » the pilot of the maxi trimaran IDEC was happy to announce.
We should add that this extraordinary performance is being achieved in unusual circumstances, as Francis Joyon is finding his own route, without any external assistance. And the Columbus Route is more complicated that the prestigious North Atlantic record. In fact, in this direction, the solo sailor has to deal with a series of weather systems coming one after the other, with transition zones, which are never easy to cope with and take time to get through. That explains basically why sailors take more time to go from east to west than they do from New York to the Lizard, where going from west to east, you have to surf along at high speed on the low-pressure areas crossing the Atlantic. That record is itself part of Francis Joyon’s schedule this year. IDEC is now on the right side of the Atlantic to go on stand-by in New York from the spring. Another exciting challenge, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For the moment, Joyon has to complete this transatl! antic crossing and tomorrow morning we should have more time to get out the calculators.