Vendée Globe

After a fast and furious 24 hours, the expected compression is starting to have an effect on the fleet, with a slight reshuffling at the front of the fleet this afternoon, and a new name in the top three, as Armel Le Cléac’h climbs into third place, from fifth yesterday.

The pace of the leading group has eased slightly, and second-placed Seb Josse has crept to within 13 miles of leader Loïck Peyron, while the hunting pack of Le Cléac’h, Jean-Pierre Dick and Vincent Riou have also gained a few miles on the front runner.

Keeping the pedal to the floor is proving key, and Armel Le Cléac’h, just to the east of fifth-placed Vincent Riou, has jumped up into third place by putting in the quickest VMG of the fleet over the past five hours. By contrast Mike Golding (GBR) has experienced some unwelcome lighter winds to the west of the pack, and has lost his sixth place back to Yann Elies.

The fleet are currently 46 hours behind the time set to the Equator by Jean Le Cam (10d 20h) four years ago, and it is difficult to see where the leaders will make up the lost time on the way to the Cape Of Good Hope — the tip of South Africa is more than 2,600 miles away (as the crow flies!), and the leaders look likely to take around 10 days to reach it. The big question now starting to play on everyone’s mind is what will the St Helena High do over the next week?

Front runner Loïck Peyron (Gitana Eighty) is expecting to have to take the long way round, and keep heading south to avoid the high pressure zone: “We have a real barrier in front of us! For the time being, we don’t have any choice. We’re all set for the big loop but you still have to keep a constant eye on the zone of high pressure and respond quickly should the latter end up being milder!”

Vincent Riou (PRB) 5th, said in this morning’s radio vacs: "We're taking the long way around.  It's quite a detour around the western edge of the high-pressure area.  But that is only what the forecast is telling us for now and we cannot rely 100% on it.  The changes in the trade winds are quite surprising: it's a bit stressful and they're really shaking us up."

Brian Thompson (Bahrain Team Pindar) 11th: “Every time I look at the weather it’s slightly different but the principles are sort of the same. I’m going to hit the high in four and half or five days and it seems like there’s no advantage to being forward or back, you still spend the same amount of time in the high but that could change.
There’s also this little front that we’re passing through that’s off Rio, which is probably making it more squally. That may actually follow us down a little more and let the leaders away. The high definitely seems to be there all the time, but what happens afterwards is different depending on what time you look at the model.”

Dee Caffari (Aviva) 15th: “A lot can happen by the time I reach the St Helena High. I’ll be a few days behind the front-runners so it’ll be interesting to see what they opt to do. It’s quite high risk to go all the way round it, it’s a lot of extra miles and you can still get stuck and be closer to Brazil than you want to be. So at the moment it looks like I’m going to bite the bullet and go through it at some point – I shall probably be upwind for an awfully long time, a lot longer than I anticipated at this point on the course.”

Since yesterday afternoon the indomitable Steve White has overtaken Spanish sailor Unai Basurko, to rise to 17th position overall, while Jonny Malbon on Artemis and Rich Wilson on Great American III have become the latest skippers to make it into the Southern Hemisphere. Swiss skipper Bernard Stamm will be the next to cross the Equator.

Jérémie Beyou on Delta Dore is still heading to Recife to make repairs to his mast, but with the wind shifting off the South American coast he may have to gybe – which will involve dropping the main due to the damaged spreaders.

 
 

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