The second night of the second stage of the Sardinha Cup was complicated, with some big storms at Cape Finisterre, which the «Région Bretagne-CMB Performance» (Tom Laperche/Morgan Lagravière) passed in the lead around midnight. “They had a bit of everything, upwind, downwind, squalls with 30 knots of wind, it couldn’t have been easy,” said race director Guillaume Rottée. This was especially true for Sophie Faguet and Benoît Charon (ADEPS-FFYB), who broke their mainsail while reefing. They informed the regatta management that they planned to make a stop in La Coruña during the day, before notifying their withdrawal, but for now they have not set course for the Coruña port.
The entire fleet has rounded the northwestern tip of Spain and is led this Thursday morning by a group of 11 boats, all a mile or two apart, with “Skipper Macif” (Erwan Le Draoulec/Loïs Berrehar), “ Smurfit Kappa – Kingspanel», «Région Bretagne-CMB Performance», the «Ageas-Team Baie de Saint-Brieuc (Maël Garnier/Pierre Leboucher).
The «Mutuelle Bleue» (Corentin Horeau/Julien Villion) and the «Région Bretagne-CMB Océane» (Chloé Le Bars/Ronan Treussart) have tried an option closer to the coast that, according to Guillaume Rottée, “does not seem to work”. He and he added: “As these are boats that weren’t very well classified in the first leg, they might have wanted to try a last-chance option.
The first part of today Thursday is expected to be headwind and from the northeast, before the situation becomes complex in the afternoon, when the wind loses strength and begins to change in all directions. “They are going to have some complicated hours until late Friday morning,” commented the race director, who maintains the same estimated arrival time as the previous day, that is, “late afternoon/early Saturday night”.
In the position report at 2:15 p.m. today, June 16, 2022, the fleet is a few miles from Cape Ortegal; point from which the Figaro3 monodesigns will enter the waters of the Bay of Biscay, a final stretch of some 300 miles to the always difficult finish line, especially given the unstable weather forecast they will encounter. It must be remembered that in the Sardinha Cup the crews cannot download meteorological files during the entire regatta, even mobile phones have them sealed so that they cannot have external help.
To the north of Cape Ortegal the winds are shifting from the southeast to the west, north and east; with intensities that oscillate between 20 knots and 10 knots of intensity and gusts that move between 27 and 16 knots for the remainder of today and tomorrow morning, Friday. Already the last hundred miles may be with headwinds to the finish line.
We will see an intense last 48 hours of this stage between Figueira da Foz and Pays de Saint-Gilles.
