Michel Desjoyeaux passed Cape Horn a week ago with a lead of 112 miles. In seven days he has increased his lead to the best part of 340 miles this afternoon, and as the wind veers more NE, with his nearest opponent Roland Jourdain now tucked in his pocket 275 miles away inshore, toward the Brasilian coast, the prospects for The Professor look increasingly favourable.
Jourdain said today that he has yet to press the accelerator hard since making his repairs after hitting a sea mammal Thursday, and has been sailing especially carefully – trying to reduce the slamming on Veolia Environnment – a task which is not proving easy in more than 40 knots when the optimum course is upwind.
Relief was perhaps the most evident emotion when Marc Guillemot called in to the radio vacations this morning, with Cape Horn two hours in his wake. The Safran skipper’s rounding was brisk and businesslike, arriving at the rock at 0730 as the fastest of the fleet overnight, before starting the long climb up the Atlantic. But it was a release for the skipper from La Trinité as he made his third trip round the Horn, his first solo, after such a dramatic set of experiences in the Big South. He is still planning to repair his mainsail mast track in the Falklands late Tuesday or early Wednesday, an operation which should take beween three and five hours. He anticipates mooring to a buoy but may drift if there is sea room, the shelter is sufficient and the weather is amenable.
Jonny Malbon confirmed today that the Vendée Globe is definitely unfinished business, a race he wants to come back to in time, after he arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, passing the Cormonandel Peninsula as the sun was rising early morning local time (late last night (GMT). A matter of hours later he was joined today by Jean-Pierre Dick and met up with Sebastien Josse (BT) to discuss future plans for repairs and repatriation.
The Pacific is not giving up the trio Bahrain Team Pindar, Akena Verandas and Aviva lightly to the Pacific. All three skippers, Brian Thompson, Arnaud Boissières and Dee Caffari will have to contend with forecasted winds strafing them at up to 70 knots, with a mountainous sea up to 12m high, as they fight to make Cape Horn. All three were well battened down, according to all their recent reports, anticipating this one final battering before they can breach the Atlantic.
Roland Jourdain, (Veolia Environnement): “I’m sailing in conditions that aren’t easy for a boat, where the resin is not fry. The wind really got up during the night, so I headed towards the west. Yesterday on the starboard tack, I was able to check that the reapirs were OK. The bulkhead seems solid enough and there are no more noises coming from it. When I was facing 45 knots of wind and rough seas, I was cautious. I took in three reefs with no headsails. In spite of that, she kept slamming a lot. As before, were sailing downwind, the strains aren’t the same. I’m trying to see what happens upwind. If I hoist some more sail, she will only slam more. There are fewer squalls now, but the wind is still up to thirty knots. Yesterday I was the perfect house-keepeer. Seeing I couldn’t sleep, I cleaned up with a lot of water to get rid of most of the bits of carbon, even if occasionally, I still itch. It’s getting better.
“I think I’m going to have to build up the speed gradually. As for Michel Desjoyeaux, when I feel a bit down, I imagine all sorts of things in my head. There’s still a long way to go and I need to look after my boat more than ever. Seeing what has happened so far in this race, we’re likely to see some more incidents yet.”
Jonny Malbon, Artemis: “I have been pretty stressed out about the whole thing, but last night kind of justified my whole decision. I had a big rip in the main and then the headboard car actually came off in a gybe last night, so I limped in today under headsails only with quite serious charging problems. All of the issues we had were compounded by the mainsail issue, but it is not good to have all of these problems, but it does justify my decision in my own head.”
“ I have an overriding sense of unfinished business for sure. Maybe, rightly or wrongly, I was written off before the start in many ways. And so I feel really, really devastated that I did not finish the race because of problems outside of my control. I guess that if things would have been different then I would still have been racing and that is my ultimate goal. With proper preparation for next time, hopefully we can be a lot more competitive.
On his mainsail delamination: “I have never seen anything like it. I have been questioning my decision based on the mainsail, to the point that half way through last week I almost turned to go back on to the course, because I thought I was over-estimating the damage to the mainsail but that is part because I have been looking at it for so long.”
“The scrim on one side, apparently I think North Sails have said, had some waxy substance attached to it and I think there is a one in ten chance that a sail will be affected by it, mine has as have some of Puma as have some of the other Volvo 70’s and has Dee.”
