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"It's true that it does one good finding a sea in harmony with the wind", said Bruno Peyron with a tinny voice during today's chat session. "We have picked up a WNW wind as forecast and have at last found some normal speed". Today the maxi-catamaran Orange is getting her mile chomping appetite back as the hours go by, now averaging 26 knots. At 1300 today she was less than 2000 miles from Cape Leeuwin (the south-west tip of Australia), the next mythical cape to be left to port.

The giant from Marseilles is starting to get back to 400 miles a day while the average speeds are getting better by the hour. The heading remains ESE and the maxi-catamaran Orange is cruising along at about 45° South, which is still a very northern route compared to Olivier de Kersauson's who passed the French Kerguelen islands 100 miles to their south. And while the next passage point is the longitude of Cape Leeuwin, Bruno Peyron and his pals will not be beating the Cape of Good Hope/Cape Leeuwin reference time recorded by brother Loïck Peyron and his crew (Innovation Explorer, which became Orange) in The Race, in 7 days and 14 hours. To beat it, the elder of the Peyron clan must pass the Australian cape by tomorrow March 28th at 1616. Mission impossible, but we can say that the stopwatch is ticking again!