A nasty low-pressure system has put a number of boats in some tough spots over the past 24 hours. Last night, Shearwater’s tracker (blue) showed an abrupt turn to the SSW and a big drop in speed. After being unable to raise them on the Sat Phone, Noonmark (white) was dispatched to investigate. About the time Noonmark got into VHF range, Shearwater reported being hove-to with boom and sail damage. They have since retired from the race and are heading to the Azores. Jacqueline IV (grey) reported this morning their own challenges with the weather.
“We are safe. As I’m sure many of you have seen on the Transatlantic website or elsewhere, a strong low-pressure system over the North Atlantic strengthened over the past 48 hours and has wreaked havoc on the fleet. We were fortunate in our timing and managed to sail off to the SE quadrant of the low before it intensified. Regardless we faced extremely trying conditions which ultimately forced us to run off from the storm only now returning to our course track 24 hours later.
“Right now we are sailing our course in strong 30 knot breeze and blue skies with large swell leftover from the storm which is moving out to the Northeast. If the strong breeze holds as anticipated we are looking at about 10 days remaining to the finish.”