Vendée Globe

With the fleet making south towards their preferred Doldrums crossing corridor, Loïck Peyron (Gitana Eighty) maintains his supremacy, keeping a cushion of around 40 miles between himself and Sébastien Josse (BT), with Jean-Pierre Dick (Paprec-Virbac 2) making a small 8 miles gain overnight in third place.

In fifth place, 72.6 miles behind, Jean Le Cam (VM Matériaux) will be only too aware that after contrary conditions in the Bay of Biscay and the slow going now, that his 2004 record to the Equator - 10 days, 11 hours, 28 minutes – will not be broken. The leader would need to cross by 00:30 hrs tonight.

As the fleet head into the Doldrums – described yesterday by skippers as ‘messy’ and ‘uncertain’ – Peyron has shown consistent speed across the wind conditions and had played out a meticulous strategy, but even he has been admitting that the weather computer models and imagery do not correspond. Today the skippers will start to experience some of the extremes of the Doldrums, spells of calm one minute and 40 knots squalls and torrential rain the next.

After taking a ‘hit’ to make west Mike Golding, GBR, (Ecover 3) has stabilized at 109 miles from Peyron in ninth place, 32 miles ahead of Jeremie Beyou (Delta Dore). Sam Davies, GBR, (ROXY) has passed her main rival Arnaud Boissieres (Akena Verandas) to hold 12^th.

Brian Thompson, GBR, (Bahrain Team Pindar) took a long westerly to try and re-gain some miles and lies 14^th.

After re-starting five days ago Bernard Stamm, SUI, (Cheminées Poujoulat) was passing the Canary Islands last night.

Infos précédentes :