After 38 days at sea Orange II, Bruno Peyron’s 120ft maxi catamaran, has entered a transition zone which marks the return of the trade winds from the St Helena high as she heads up the Atlantic on her final leg to the finish of her round the world sprint. She now has a 10-day advantage under her belt which gives Peyron and crew an opportunity make the most of the light airs off the Brazilian coast to carry out work on the damaged port rudder.

At 0400 this morning Peyron explained the situation: “Things are going well. We’re currently passing through a rather tricky convergence zone off Brazil as forecast. So we have frequent sail changes to carry out, alternating between the code zero and the solent. We have 10-12 knots of wind, which drops off to 4-5 knots at times. We’re going to do our best to get out of this spot as best we can.

“This transition arrived a bit earlier than we had hoped for carrying out the work, because it’s still dark. However, the situation is unlikely to change much during the day. It wasn’t easy to see this weather situation coming, so we’re going to have to improvise. We’ll be carrying out our check-up as planned. If we don’t use Plan A, we’ll switch to Plan B. The aim today is to get out of this tricky area, find the right moment to carry out our work, and then get going immediately afterwards.

“For the time being, we’re working on the weather, particularly what lies ahead in this zone and up to the Equator, or until we reach the north easterly trades. We’re not really looking much at the North Atlantic, as it’s a complete mess, so I prefer not to look! There’s no way through for the moment, and things are going to have to change by the time we get up there. It just can’t stay like that. Apart from that, it’s getting hotter and hotter. This is a wet equatorial climate, which isn’t very pleasant inside, so it’s better to be outside.”