SUNDAY October 14th

51 of the 60 boats presents in La Rochelle took the start on Thursday in Lanzarote, and 3 others courageos late minis joined them soon after.Altogether, 54 boats where in the race but it seem that today 2 skippers already gave up because of broken pilots (Amrel Tripond and Eric Vassard).The skippers already encountered all sort of wind conditions, exept regular wind.

What was Hervé's strategy for this second leg?

The strategy for Herve is simple: he must go full speed due South in going a little bit West when the conditions allow him to do so. The trade wind should allow him to reach quickly under spinnaker the Cap Verdi Island before facing the biggest difficulties of this leg: the horses latitude.

Once he has found the good way through this zone between the North Atlantic and those from the South Atlantic, he would have to head towards Salvador with reaching conditions and certainly under geenaker. The strategy then seem dead easy but the essential point would be clearly where to cross this bloody ITZC zone (Inter tropical zone …)

As Herve does not know the position of the other competitors, he will not be able to play a tactical race. He would have to keep along the 4 weeks that will last this second leg his full motivation to make the boat go as far as possible. In particular he should not get discourage if suddenly he has no wind during one day and he should not think that he is the only one in this case. A lot of competitors have got problems to motivate themselves if they don’t see other boats and if they don’t know what is their ranking. This is at this occasion that Herve hopes to have a little edge on his competitors due to his long experience at high level when he was cross-country skying. It is important to know that in order to be performant on a long run. It is interesting to know that Herve did his best results during the collecting races on the longest single handed race (10th of the first leg of the mini-Pavois which lasted 5 days). The longer it is, the better Herve should be at ease. This leg will then be very much psychological and Herve prepare himself by relaxation and sophrology. Relaxed, he can then imagine himself all along this leg which should allow him to stand better the moments when he would be becalmed.