Day 3 Daily Download - breakneck speed down Portugal

Approaching the end of their third day at sea in the Transat Café L’OR, Francesca Clapcich and Will Harris on board 11th Hour Racing are sailing at breakneck speed down the coast of Portugal, running before a strong northerly airflow and a following sea.

In a short video from on board this morning, Francesca brought to life a state-of-the art foiling IMOCA at full pace, with boatspeed on the cockpit instruments showing 29.2 knots and the whole place shaking and howling.

At the nav station on the onboard computer, you could see the black outline of 11th Hour Racing and the outline of the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. “That’s just us here,” said Francesca in a still dark cockpit, pointing at the screen, “and that’s Portugal!”

Not long afterwards, she posted two short videos showing the boat above deck surfing powerfully through the waves as dawn was breaking and with the appendages howling in a constant chorus that reminded us they were moving at close to maximum safe speed.

Earlier on this third night at sea on their journey from Le Havre to Martinique – still over 3,500 nautical miles away – Francesca was able to give a fuller update from a pitch black cockpit. 

“It’s been a pretty intense night,” she said. “We did a lot of gybes, trying to stay in the best wind around this low pressure … yeah, an intense night, but we are pushing through it … it’s noisy and still quite windy and with big waves out there, but we are going downwind nicely.”

It has been another very useful 24 hours for Francesca and Will who have been battling Elodie Bonafous and Yann Eliès on Association Petits Princes-Queguiner for fourth place. 11th Hour Racing was ahead of them on the way to Cape Finisterre but then, in the gybing match off that northwest corner of Spain, Bonafous and Eliès overtook and built a lead of up to 20 miles. 

However, Francesca and Will have since worked their way back into fourth position, picking their gybes carefully, and this morning – about 200 miles northwest of Lisbon – they are back ahead, with an advantage over Queguiner of around 17 miles. 

In terms of the 18-strong fleet overall, 11th Hour Racing remains very usefully positioned, 25 miles behind third-placed Allagrande MAPEI, who are just a couple of miles ahead of second-placed MACIF Santé Prévoyance, while the leaders are still Jérémie Beyou and Morgan Lagravière on Charal.

In the big picture, Will and Francesca are well placed as the stampede south towards the Canaries continues. But up ahead over the next 12 hours, the winds are going to ease as the leaders sail into the outer fringes of a large area of calm around Madeira and the Canaries where the fleet may well begin to compress from behind.

This will be another tricky transition phase where balancing the information on screen with what’s happening outside the boat on the water will be critical. But for now, the key is to get south as fast as possible and stay on the east side of the course to avoid being sucked into the windless area to the west.