Francis Joyon prepares to establish a new record route Bordeaux to Rio

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Now, back to our little analysis of Francis Joyon's start, off Royan.

I have still not come across any video or other photos in that connection, so this could be the definitive coverage of it!




Here's what I stitched together after looking at the screengrabs, the chart, finding the location of the webcam, and looking at the area on Google Earth.

• 'Launch pad' is about where IDEC was, in the second webcam-screengrab.

• The green line is the webcam angle, from the roof of Royan's Palais de Congres, over the red channel marker shown on the chart.

• The red line is (I think) the official starting line between the lights at the end of the Verdon pier, and the breakwater at Royan's ferry slip.

• The short horizontal red line is about where a similar line is shown on the tracker, indicating where IDEC started.

• The black line is drawn to be 1nm on Google earth.

• The areas I ringed with brown lines are sandbanks/shallows. On the chart you see that the 'Banc de Saint-George' is a complicating element in regard to starting here.

• The white line shows where Joyon sailed out from the start, according to the tracker. It was along that line that my two last webcam-screengrabs showed the boat.

 

After 10 days at sea Francis Joyon is approaching his goal with about 1200nm to go:

http://www.trimaran-idec.com/en/news.articles.aspx?id=260

 

Francis Joyon 60nm to go:

http://www.trimaran-idec.com/en/media.tracker.aspx

 

Francis has arrived in Rio de Janeiro. Reference time that was set: 13 days, 03 hours, 05 minutes and 19 seconds for the theoretical 4812 miles.

http://www.trimaran-idec.com/en/news.articles.aspx?id=264