Yes, there are constant themes to this Vendée Globe. Some are regular, day to day, déjà vu. Been here before. Saturday night, the leader board has changed little.
Tonight’ simple premise is the consistency to Michel Desjoyeaux, working relentlessly to pull a few miles on Roland Jourdain in tough, difficult conditions.
Desjoyeaux has gained steadily since the pair lined up on the same tack early yesterday and now leads tonight by the best part of 75 miles from Bilou on Veolia Environnement, making over two knots quicker this evening.
But sometimes this race stops you short, delivering jarring themes which seem fated in their timing and their cruelty.
For some the pursuit of the Vendee Globe must seem like a personal haunting: Bernard Stamm out of the race again, Mike Golding in Fremantle with a broken mast to name but two skippers who have suffered more than most.
Golding, of course, had only lead for a few short hours before his mast came down. Stamm had worked so hard to get back into contention before his rudder bearings failed, and has never yet completed even two of the Great Capes in a Vendee Globe.
Now four years on and it is Seb Josse who tonight has been in the wars, a strange synchronicity with the same week in 2004.
Josse hit a growler on 23rd December 2004 and three days later had just repaired his misaligned rudders. Four years on tonight it is Josse – who had sailed a masterful race to date – who is nursing the hobbled BT north in the knowledge that he, again, has to find way to make his rudders line up, as well as fixing his deck if he is to carry on. How cruel is it that he is the skipper who has been most vocal about how he has been pacing himself and sailing prudently