Orange 2’s decent of the Atlantic on her Jules Verne record attempt is proving fairly typical. Rather than finding settled north-easterly trade winds blowing at 20 knots, Bruno Peyron and team aboard the 120ft maxi-cat yesterday had cope with weak northerlies, generated by a high pressure cell in the north-west.

However, they now seem to have got through the worst of the light stuff and are currently facing over 20kts of wind and starting to clock up the miles again using large gennaker and full mainsail. Since they started on Monday they’ve covered a total of 1,961 miles.

Although Team Orange have been on a south-westerly heading since last night, Peyron’s immediate aim is to get closer to the high, in order to catch a shift to the north-east, before gybing, in roughly six hours, towards Cape Verde Islands. The objective is to make good speed towards that mark by sliding downwind, and to reach the archipelago located 270 nm off Dakar, Senegal, by the end of the evening.

Commenting this morning Peyron said: “Like we anticipated, yesterday was difficult. We had to cross a tricky zone of the high, and at the same time deal with the Canary Islands passage. We encountered light winds, and even sailed at 4-5 knots for a few hours. We had no other choice but gaining in the south, and thus privileging VMG. Afterwards, speed came back little by little. Now, we have rather unstable winds, between 12 and 17 knots, and we’re sailing with all the canvas up – full main and big gennaker, for 1230 sq m. of total surface. It’s quite a sight under the full moon!”