Giovanni Soldini and Maserati approaching the equator More than 2,700 miles run in 8 days at an average speed of 14.5 knots
Giovanni Soldini and Maserati approaching the equator
More than 2,700 miles run in 8 days at an average speed of 14.5 knots
Eight days after their departure, Maserati is flying at speeds of 20 knots towards the equator, driven by the trade winds. A fast descent that shall slow down during the day as Giovanni Soldini and his team enter the equatorial calm area, between 5 and 3/2N.
The spirits on board are high, Maserati has already sailed 2750 miles (of the 13,225 separating New York from San Francisco) at an average speed of 14.5 knots.
On board with Soldini Italians Guido Broggi, Corrado Rossignoli and Michele Sighel, French Sébastien Audigane, German Boris Herrmann, American Ryan Breymaier, Chinese Jianghe Teng said Tiger and Spaniard Carlos Hernandez. The crew is now really tight-knit: four people on deck at a time, shifts of four hours each, but staggered so that every two hours two new crew members are on watch.
“The passage through the equator is complicated,” Soldini explains. “Windless zones alternate with unpredictable storms. We hope to get by quickly so that we can continue south as soon as possible. The next gate will be Cape Horn. We will try to get there as fast as we can but it depends on what happens with the wind along the Brazilian coast. If we are lucky, the anticyclone of St. Helena will give us good close-hauled winds. After Rio de Janeiro small depressions and cold fronts will come up from the land, we will see once there how to face that. I think we will have to pass through the Isla de los Estados channel to reduce the upwind miles of the Cape Horn passage, then we will do our best to stay close to the Argentina coast. But the way is still long, first we have to pass the equator…”.
Maserati set sail on December 31st, 2012 from New York at 17:22 (Italian time) aiming to break the New York-San Francisco record, along the historic Golden Route (57 days 3 hours and 2 minutes is the time set by Yves Parlier aboard Aquitaine Innovations). The first three days of sailing have been very hard due to tough weather conditions – cold, strong winds (up to 40 knots), high waves (up to 5 meters) – but very fast: Maserati has reached up to 33 knots of speed. After two days of deadlock in a bubble of high pressure, which allowed the crew to dry the boat and fix minor damage on board (three aluminium stern stanchions were bent, rudder roll had cracks, wheel was a little loose), Maserati entered the trade winds on January 6th and began their descent at 20 knots towards the equator.
