Maserati heading North

On day 25, Maserati continues her ascent in the Pacific Ocean sailing at 10 knots with about 20 knots of wind from the North.

Giovanni tells us: “As soon as we passed the high pressure, the winds from North (about 20 knots) arrived. We are going to sail upwind for 12 hours before a cold front gets over us. This cold front comes along with a huge depression, we are really hoping to not have to go completely into it and are able to stay on its edge. Inside the front, the wind will turn coming first from the North-West and then tomorrow from the West. We will eventually reach the high pressure of the South Pacific with its tradewinds”.

 

After rounding Cape Horn, the “Everest of the seas”, the most southerly point of South America, Giovanni Soldini and Maserati‘s team have started sailing back up in the Pacific Ocean along the Chilean coast, following a route that is parallel to the continental rise.

“Everything is going really well and we are in very high spirits  in the last hours a cold front has passed over us. The night was tough because of the unstable winds and the storms. But right now we are sailing windward in excellent weather conditions. In the last 20 days we have worked hard to dry up the interior of Maserati, closing all of the waterways. But outside the biting cold is a big problem, mostly at night. The water is 7 degrees, and I prefer not to know what the air temperature is at night…”

Giovanni Soldini and his crew of eight left New York on December 31, 2012 to challenge the historical Golden Route record, 13.225 miles from New York to San Francisco. They reached the equator in 9 days and 45 minutes and rounded Cape Horn after 21 days, 23 hours and 14 minutes. It is a record time non only compared to Yves Parlier’s Aquitaine Innovations (who holds the record in the monohull category – Maserati’s one – with a time of 57 days and 3 hours) but also compared to Gitana 13, Lionel Lemonchois’ maxi catamaran, that in 2008 took 8 hours more to leave the Atlantic Ocean behind. Gitana 13 holds the record in the multihull category with a time of 43 days and 3 minutes.

Maserati is 6.160 miles from San Francisco.