Competitors on the fourth leg of La Solitaire du Figaro&mdasha French offshore race in its final stage between Dingle, Ireland and Dieppe, France&mdashhad a surprise visit from the race committee via chartered jet. The 52 competitors were engaged in a close match that saw most of them less than five miles from the top three boats.
From the competition website, lasolitaire.com:
Having had up to 15 knots of south westerly and west-south-westerly wind to carry them this far, 20 miles or so from Wolf Rock, the real business of strategy is about to start as the breeze lessens and a less predictable weather regime imposes itself. As the weather front arriving from the west runs up against the high pressure system presently sitting over England a zone of transition is setting up, with the wind due to pass into the south and ease to the 5 &mdash 10 knot range. Conditions for the passage up the Channel to the Isle of Wight are looking to be light then, but not to the degree expected, only the last hundred or so miles across to Dieppe looking like torturing the skippers with frustratingly fluky conditions.
