Ideal conditions for the start of the solo Ultime Challenge from Brest Sunday at 13:30h with sunshine and 10-15 knots of wind – just enough for foiling.
After a quick traverse of the Bay of Biscay the six strong fleet should reach Cape Finisterre (340 miles) early Monday morning, after around twenty hours and after that the first complex weather feature.
After the start of the 24,220 nautical miles race the long term objective is to be first on to the train of eastward moving low pressure systems in the Southern Ocean and any initial losses on these high speed, giant ULTIMs can be problematic on this course.
And a much bigger low pressure trough is out in the Atlantic which has broken up the prospects of any trade winds to take them south towards the Equator at high speeds.
Veteran weather router Marcel van Triest explains . . . It is pretty tricky to get down to the Cape Verdes because winter is arriving and you get a blocking situation and lots of low pressure systems mid Atlantic.
You can go there but it’s upwind. And if you go too far it gets wavy and windy or you can stay east which is tricky with little lows forming in front of the Iberian peninsula which could be upwind or downwind depending on 50 miles difference.
So that is somewhere where you could be left behind – maybe even if you have issues – and that can have consequences which persist until you get towards the Southern Ocean and, say, the Falklands.
What you really want to be doing is making sure that at the entrance to the Southern Ocean that you are in the right carriage (on the train of lows going east) and you are not left behind.
That puts the onus on this beginning to make sure you don’t miss something at the Cape Verdes that would make you miss the carriage.
Follow the race tracking on https://www.arkeaultimchallengebrest.com/en
