Yoann Richomme (Paprec-Arkéa) “We have the two Conq-Koch sisterships first and second just now that is quite cool, I think Antoine can be quite proud. The boats are great but we are missing a bit of speed compared with Thomas.

It feels like it has been the same day for five or six days now, since we left the Canary Islands the trade winds have been about the same strength, 18-22kts and we are just playing the shifts and a little bit the wind bend around the high pressure so every day is a bit the same and these boats are on autopilot and so every day kinda feels the same. We are adjusting the autopilot settings, we are adjusting the sails, we are learning the boat but we are definitely missing some knowledge to get it to go as fast as Thomas is getting it to go. But every day we are learning. It is interesting with Yann sharing every watch what we found out.

The old guy (Yann) has just woken up in the middle of the day, he is eating cereal out of a plastic bag. He is like a student. 

You can call what Teamwork are doing as an option (laughs) I’d call it torture. They must be hating themselves but on the routing they are still in a good position to win it. But I actually doubt they will. We will see. We will give it the benefit of the doubt. It is very hard to keep up with the pace of the routing there. Initially they show you some really nice shifts and fronts and in theory you are always moving. But as you see last night and this morning they have been in a light winds area and they have been almost stopped in five knots of breeze, you are not going anywhere. I suspect they are making slow progress compared to what they were hoping.

For us in the south it is easier and if it goes wrong we can dive south again. We should be crossing their path in two days, we are four days out from the finish, and we will cross paths. Hopefully we will be in front. We are always bringing work for the shore team. But we have planned ahead, we have a lot of materials there, boat builders will do some work on the structure – nothing much it is not too bad and what we anticipated. We pretty much working with a boat at 100%. 

We feel really good. We have an amazing bed. We even have bed sheets! That tells you how far we have gone. And the mattress is amazing. We are in good shape. But we keep on rotating all the time there is almost always someone in the bunk.” 

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Cover photo @Transat Jacques Vabre 2023