Vendée Globe: It’s About to Get Real

(November 29, 2016; Day 24) – They might be in different oceans split by 3,500 nautical miles but today both the Vendée Globe leaders and the pack at the back of the fleet were gearing up for big breeze.

Frontrunners Armel Le Cléac’h and Alex Thomson, just 20 miles adrift as they rocket towards the Kerguelen Islands, could be hit with gales in a few days’ time after transitioning through a tricky high pressure zone. Around 10 days behind the leading pair the large group of 15 boats bringing up the rear were also anticipating strong winds of up to 35 knots as they’re scooped up by a large easterly-moving depression.

Title favourite Le Cléac’h, who has now led for two days, said he needed to be ready for heavy weather to strike his boat Banque Populaire VIII at any moment.

“After the Kerguelen Islands there will be a tricky transition zone to deal with, but we’re particularly watching the gales forecast for late this week,” reports Le Cléac’h, who posted 456.2 nm in the past 24 hours. “Things look very rough at the Australia waypoints and the ice zone with gales forecast. It’s a few days ahead, but we’re keeping an eye on that to see the strength of the wind and the sea state we can expect. There are lows coming down from Madagascar, which deepen fairly quickly.”

Le Cléac’h and Thomson should pass north of the Kerguelens, a remote archipelago of islands in the southern Indian Ocean, tomorrow morning if their speedos remain at today’s 20 knots.

“Once we get past the Kerguelens and out towards Australia I’d say we could see some quite big winds,” added Hugo Boss skipper Thomson, the only Brit in the race. “Hopefully I can just stay on Armel’s heels and by Thursday I should be on starboard, which means I’ve got a foil in the water and I can sail the boat to its full potential.”

For the large group of 10 boats still in the Atlantic battling to get south speeds were starting to rise as they began to pick up the beginnings of a depression that will finally fire them towards the Cape of Good Hope. Within the pack, split by just 200nm, only leader Louis Burton on Bureau Vallée appeared to be struggling this afternoon – at the 1400 UTC report he was making just 2.1 knots compared with the 12 to 15 knots of the boats around him. Having spent almost two weeks floundering in light airs the group are now facing a forecast of 35-knot winds in the next 12 to 24 hours as the depression takes hold.

Five hundred miles west, the trio of Alan Roura, Enda O’Coineen and Pieter Heerema were capitalising on picking up the stronger breeze first. “We are in the process of entering into the Southern Ocean,” said Swiss sailor Roura, at 23 years old the youngest in the fleet. “I have 23 knots of wind, and it should strengthen this afternoon. I’m gradually narrowing the gap to the others – we’ll see tomorrow how that works out. We’re going to have this sort of weather for 40 to 45 days, so we need to get used to it.”

Meanwhile Jean-Pierre Dick became the seventh skipper to cross into the Indian Ocean after passing the Cape of Good Hope at 0915 UTC, completing the passage from Les Sables d’Olonne in 22 days, 21 hours and 13 minutes. Amazingly, despite being almost five days short of Alex Thomson’s record-breaking run of 17 days, 22 hours and 58 minutes, Dick’s time is still two hours less than that set by Armel Le Cléac’h in the 2012 Vendée Globe. Thomas Ruyant in eighth and Jean Le Cam in ninth are due to pass the milestone later today.

Patrick Viau, technical director for Nandor Fa’s Spirit of Hungary team, will be the guest on tomorrow’s Vendee Globe Live. Tune in at vendeeglobe.org at 1200 UTC.

Quotes

Alex Thomson (Hugo Boss): “The south is somewhere you have to be really careful – you don’t want to get into trouble down here. I certainly approach it differently to the first phase in the Atlantic. Down here it’s somewhere else. Around about this spot in 2007 when I was doing the Barcelona World Race with Andrew Cape I got the news that my father at home had had a heart attack. I’ll never forget the feeling I had of being absolutely useless, so isolated, hardly being able to make a phone call even. I treat this place with caution. I don’t really feel that alone to be honest, there’s hundreds of thousands of people following us, I’m only 20 miles away from Armel, so I don’t really feel lonely. I feel isolated but not lonely.”

Alan Roura (La Fabrique) “I’m keeping my choice of sails secret, as I know Enda is listening. He is out to get me! I must admit that I didn’t choose the easiest of boats as far as life inside is concerned. It’s really tiny. We spend a lot of time inside. I get the feeling that we are like tramps out at sea. No shower, no toilet. We have gone from temperatures, where we were sweating to the cold in just two days. It’s a bit of a shock in the boat.”

Paul Meilhat (SMA): “I can still see Jérémie six miles away. It’s reassuring to have someone alongside. We talk on the VHF and that enables us to keep up a faster pace. If there’s a sail change needed, we try to do it before each other to grab a few extra miles. We are not really marking each other, but we do watch what the other one is doing. It’s good to have a pacemaker. When you’re alone, even with the computer, there are days when you are quicker and others, when you are not as fast. Today, the speed isn’t good at all. We have cross seas and the wind is very unstable going from 15 to 25 knots in the squalls.”

Ranking (Top 5 of 29 as of 22:00 UTC)
1. Banque Populaire VIII, Armel Le Cléac’h (FRA), 15486 to finish
2. Hugo Boss, Alex Thomson (GBR), 18.49 nm to leader
3. Edmond de Rothschild, Sébastien Josse (FRA), 537.2 nm
4. Maître CoQ, Jérémie Beyou (FRA), 1040.85 nm
5. SMA, Paul Meilhat (FRA), 1051.17 nm

Race details – Tracker – Ranking – Facebook – VendeeGlobe TV

Background:
The eighth Vendée Globe, which began November 6 from Les Sables d’Olonn, France, is the only non-stop solo round the world race without assistance. Twenty-nine skippers representing four continents and ten nations set sail on IMOCA 60s in pursuit of the record time set by François Gabart in the 2012-13 race of 78 days, 2 hours and 16 minutes.

For the first time in the history of the event, seven skippers will set sail on IMOCA 60s fitted with foils: six new boats (Banque Populaire VIII, Edmond de Rothschild, Hugo Boss, No Way Back, Safran, and StMichel-Virbac) and one older generation boat (Maitre Coq). The foils allow the boat to reduce displacement for speed gains in certain conditions. It will be a test to see if the gains can topple the traditional daggerboard configuration during the long and demanding race.

Retirements:
November 19, Day 14 – Bertrand de Broc, MACSF, UFO collision
November 22, Day 17 – Vincent Riou, PRB, UFO collision
November 24, Day 19 – Morgan Lagravière, Safran, UFO collision

Source: Vendee Globe