Vendée Globe: Wind Gods Smiling on Thomson

(November 14, 2016; Day 9) – Black-hulled Hugo Boss has gained and leads the Vendée Globe out of the Doldrums, abiding by simple and straightforward strategy. At midday today, after several hours of rain and cloud cover, in a light breeze, the British skipper Alex Thomson : “I just want to get out of this mess as quickly as possible because I hate it.”

Taking the most direct, southerly, shortest route through the Doldrums looks to have paid handsomely. While all of his closest French rivals had first slanted west then – later this afternoon – angled south to parallel the course taken by Hugo Boss – Thomson’s single minded choice had built his lead over the course of Monday.

It will be early Tuesday maybe before the real outcome is evident, but it looks for the meantime like Thomson has pulled off a second consecutive coup d’état against his French rivals.

On Saturday evening he gained by passing directly through the Cabo Verde islands to take the lead, making two perfectly timed gybes to exit the island channel on a perfect, accelerating wind shift. It now looks like his lone strategy, sticking as much to gut instinct, experience and simple logic as the appliance of brain curdling science, has paid again.

“It is difficult. You can’t really look at the GRIB files because they don’t really mean much in this area, you can look at Satellite pictures, you can look at Quikscat images which show actually what wind angles are at a certain time. But there is still a fair amount of guess work, a fair amount of luck involved. To me there is no fixed science.

“If you were to speak to Jean Yves Bernot (ace French ‘meteo’ specialist who coaches many of the French skippers) he makes a science of it. But for me, I entered the Doldrums further east than anyone else, but here I am just trying to play my angles, the best VMG, getting south as quickly as possible. I am playing the clouds as they come, whatever local effects there are.”

“I just want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

Of his Cabo Verde advance which gained him the lead, Thomson – who is the first British skipper to lead the Vendée Globe since December 2008– explained: “I could see on the high resolution GRIBs that they were forecasting a shift and a slight acceleration at the end of the channel there. And a bit of a shift to the east. That meant I could get a good angle out, after I had stuck in my two gybes. My objective was really to miss the wind shadow of the next island which is about 2000m high. So that was my reasoning. I was not sure it was going to work out perfectly. But it worked brilliantly. I am happy with that.”

Either due to wind shift or tactical consolidation, the tracker at 21:00 UTC shows Thomson to have slid east to a position in front of his pursuers. Having covered 278.2 nm in the past 24 hours, the leader should break across the Equator tomorrow night, potentially setting a new reference for the race, over a day quicker than the best time set in 2004-5.

The South Atlantic ahead looks complicated. But because the Saint Helena high pressure is messy and well displaced to the east there might be a more direct passage in better breeze for the leading group of seven before the SE’ly and E’ly breezes die away and become variable.

Tanguy de Lamotte reached Mindelo in the Cape Verde islands around 1500hrs UTC, where he is expected to start repairs to his masthead. The race rules are very specific. He is allowed to pick up an existing mooring and leave it, unassisted, or he can set his own anchor. If he breaks his engine seal and uses his engine he must tell the International Jury who will apply a penalty, if considered applicable.

Ranking (Top 5 of 29 as of 22:00 UTC)
1. Hugo Boss, Alex Thomson (GBR), 21626 nm to finish
2. Banque Populaire VIII, Armel Le Cléac’h (FRA), 71.82 nm to leader
3. PRB, Vincent Riou (FRA), 75.28 nm
4. Edmond de Rothschild, Sébastien Josse (FRA), 78.87 nm
5. SMA, Paul Meilhat (FRA), 87.6 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.

Source: Vendee Globe