So, we made the north option. However with no wind for us at some points, it killed our option.
The forecast was really bad in this area. Sometimes there was no wind where we expected much more. The gulf stream is responsible for this with the warm current crossing the atlantic completely disturbing the wind and a big change in sea temperature sometimes totally killing the wind.
We had an amazing change 2 days ago. In less than 15 minutes we lost 10 degrees of sea and air temperature, passing from 14 to 4 degrees with the wind just dropping to 4 knots and turning left. The cold water increases the friction which reduces the wind speed.
Sometimes the wind on top of the mast is 10 knots higher than the wind estimated on the surface of the water which also kills the performance of the boat.
Now we are 50 miles behind the leader but ahead of us there is a wall of no wind. This means the fleet should compress a lot and there could be a new start! A finish like in Newport but this time it could be in our favour. It is time to get our pay back…
The only small difference is that this compression is not 10 miles from the finish line but 600 miles instead and in very light air to do it.
3 to 4 days to do this last 600 miles.
