Club Med Roaring up the Atlantic in The Race

The giant Club Med catamaran is continuing to set a record pace on the way back up the Atlantic. At noon today the Grant Dalton-skippered catamaran had a lead of 891 miles over second placed Innovation Explorer, currently 200 miles from Cape Horn.

Club Med is gobbling up the degrees of latitude now that the course to steer towards home is to the North East. Cape Horn lies at 57 degrees South and this morning, just 30 hours after rounding the famous landmark, the boat was almost 10 degrees further North and still going strong. On the satellite telephone this morning with his shore team, Dalton had this to say:

"We are flying, really flying up the coast here. We are more than 200 miles North of the Falklands and we only went round Cape Horn yesterday. We are 600 miles South of Montevideo, this is very fast progress."

How long will it last and what does it mean for Club Med's continuing progress towards the finish? Dalton continued: "We are monitoring the St Helen's High. This is our next major obstacle. We could get lucky. The sequence of weather patterns has come full cycle since the leading boats in the Vendée Globe came through these parts. We thought we were going to hit the ridge of high pressure that halted Michel Desjoyeaux a few weeks ago. He had a lead of 650 miles going into this and came out having lost all but 100 miles of it. His lead was two days ours is about the same. But if we slip through before the gate closes we may well be through with this part of the world and on course for a finish in Marseilles pretty early, the beginning of March. But there is a big if, and as the weather forecasts for this part of the world are notoriously unreliable it could all change again pretty quickly."

Conditions on board are comfortable at the moment. In spite of the high speeds the international crew on Club Med are guiding the boat through this notoriously complicated part of the world with an eye on the weather and an eye on the condition of their boat:

"The stretch of Ocean between the Falklands and Rio is one of the most dangerous stretches in The Race. With a lot of current heading South there is always a reason for the sea to be confused, short and random. Basically able to destroy boats quickly. We are sailing with two reefs and a staysail set in 30 knots of wind. The angle is about 100 degrees so it is fast. It is pretty bumpy so we have opened up the angle a bit to speed her up and make it smoother."

More Information:

• YachtsandYachting.com The Race Information Page