Vendée Globe

The intensity is telling at the front of the Vendée Globe fleet but as the breezes appear to be getting a little lighter ahead so the pressure will only increase among the leading group.

Peyron has seen his lead shrink from more than 30 miles in the early morning to 24.3 miles later this afternoon while the gains for third placed

Seb Josse (BT) also continue, but as the fleet converge again after their choices at the Canary Islands today, there is still less than 100 miles, in terms of DTF (distance to finish) from 10

to first, and the lateral separation is still about 120 miles from Jean Le Cam in the east who is sticking to his lane inside Peyron, while out in the west Vincent Riou (PRB) and Armel le Cléac’h (Brit Air) have separated slightly with Brit Air taking a small lead.

Jean-Pierre Dick (Paprec-Virbac 2) spoke today of his tiredness, his vivid dreams where he considered Jesus to be trimming his sails, but more importantly of losing time when he had to recover a gennaker from the water.

“I let go my gennaker halyard and the sail fell into the water.  It was like a big trawl net.  It was an hour-long struggle to get it back on board.” He told today’s radio broadcast.

Brian Thompson, GBR, (Bahrain Team Pindar) also admitted to having been wrestling with a gennaker, but his problem was both more time consuming and more compromising.  He spoke of wrapping his crucial all purpose big gennaker around the inner stay, tearing it to the point that it requires a big repair. Thompson had been making ground on 10^th placed Mike Golding, GBR,  on Ecover 3, until the damage, but the tables have been turned since and Golding has built a cushion of 70 miles, after admitting that he thought had been able to see Ecover 3 yesterday.

Sam Davies, GBR, (ROXY), 14^th, seems to have taken the upper hand again in her all girl duel with Dee Caffari, GBR, (Aviva). Davies’ westerly route, to Caffari’s easterly option has given a lead of 17 miles.

Unai Basurko, ESP, (Pakea Bizkaia) reported in to the radio vacations today that he was now in good breeze, taking the most inshore route, some 125 miles off Essouira.

Derek Hatfield, CAN, (Algimouss Spirit of Canada) was making good ground in light winds today after restarting very early this morning. Ahead of him, Bernard Stamm, SUI, (Cheminées Poujoulat), around 90 miles in front and making slow progress in soft winds, frustrating after he started again 24 hours earlier than the Canadian. But can the former Mountie ‘catch his man’?

Jérémie Beyou, FRA, (Delta Dore): “ The guys who are leading the fleet are going very fast, and when I try to match their rhythm I am suffering for the boat. I am surprised that the risks they take. I don’t want to be a moralist but I don’t feel want to sail like that at this stage. It is difficult for me to see them make advances, but I know too that the boat and equipment will remind you at the worst opportunity if you have abused it.”

Mike Golding, GBR, ECOVER 3: “It has been power reaching conditions and so I have broken out my Southern Ocean sails.”

Obviously the pace is very high, especially among the leaders, they will have a spurt where they are helming and they will go into the lead, and then they will take a rest and they will lose the lead and that is the way it is, and being at the front then you will just have to take the pressure with being in that position. The reality is that this is a very long race and you have to modulate the way you perform, otherwise you are going to break something or break yourself. But then we all know in this front group of ten that we are all pushing because someone might get away with it. And one of the things I am very aware of with my deficit of 90 miles to the leader or so, is that it could turn to a horrible extension, that happened to me on the last race. You get left behind because of differing weather systems.”

Brian Thompson, GBR, (Bahrain Team Pindar): “ I have had an absolutely epic four or five hours,  because I had some damage to my A3 spinnaker and so I am actually using my fractional spinnaker. I was taking it down in 27 knots of wind on the other side of Madeira. As I was taking it down it wrapped around the stay for the inner staysail, and it was one of these moments when you thought: ‘Oh this could be very, very bad.’ It was pretty rough and it looked like I might have to climb up the rig. It took at least two hours and three times I had to pull it out of the water.”

“I am a little compromised, because that is a really useful sail for all sorts of conditions. And it is a pretty big tear, from front to back. So I will have to repair it at some time.”

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