Endless doldrums! The Intertropical Convergence Zone is not being kind to the all-female crew of The Famous Project.
The maxi trimaran IDEC SPORT, began to slow down Friday evening and will not be released before Sunday evening (7 Dec).
Nevertheless, the boat is progressing steadily southward and is approaching the Equator this Sunday morning, currently about a hundred miles away.
At 13:30 hrs Sunday 7 Dec they were sailing at 20 knots and had covered 3030 nm. This put them 971 nm off the record pace of Francis Joyon in 2017.
The giant trimaran will change hemispheres in upwind conditions. Its relatively eastern position will give it an interesting angle to the wind to lengthen its strident more reaching conditions.
This will be an opportunity for Alexia Barrier and the crew of eight women sailors of seven different nationalities to “cut through the Atlantic corners” away from the Brazilian coast.
All minds on board will then turn to the transition with the disturbed systems of the southern ocean, a boulevard towards the other major landmarks of this Jules Verne Trophy, the Cape of Good Hope and its neighbor, Cape Agulhas, which marks the entrance into the Indian Ocean, hopefully within a week from today.
The sailing record for the extreme round-the-world race for crewed multihulls, without stops or assistance, was set nine years ago by Francis Joyon and his five-man crew at 40 days, 23 hours, and 30 minutes.
The crew :
Alexia Barrier (46) – France – Captain
Dee Caffari (53) – Great Britain – First Officer
Annemieke Bes (47) – Netherlands
Rebecca “Bex” Gmuer (25) – Switzerland & New Zealand
Deborah “Debs” Blair (23) – Great Britain
Molly LaPointe (30) – American & Italian – Boat Captain
Tamara “Xiquita” Echegoyen (41) – Spain
Stacey Jackson (42) – Australia
