Mike Golding lead on Ecover, broke his halyard and Jean Le Cam took over the lead.
The British skipper regained it for 13 hours before another snapped halyard let Vincent Riou escape, definitively.
The contrast with this epic race could not be starker.
All three, Golding, Le Cam and Riou, potential winners of this edition, have suffered their own traumas.
Riou and Le Cam - first and second last time – end up on the same boat, mast-less, engine-less and towed to safety.

There has been no change to the lead of this race for 25 days, nearly 40% of its duration to the present has been dominated by Michel Desjoyeaux. Indeed it is the ice cool Foncia skipper who has been seemingly untouched by the dramas that have occurred, sticking resolutely in race mode ever since he re-started 40 hours after the start, two months ago yesterday. Desjoyeaux concurred with current predictions by Meteo France and Vendée Globe race direction that the leader could finish before the end of this month, even as early as the 28th. 

Indeed contrary to just about every expectation expressed beforehand, even those of ‘The Professor’ himself – who predicted a tight race with perhaps three hours or less between the first and second boat – this edition of the Vendée Globe has returned the race to the realms of a human adventure first and a race second.

Even second placed Roland Jourdain, for 25 days a constant threat since he trailed Foncia passed the stricken, dismasted Mike Golding, sounded harassed and stressed today. As well as the practical issues of completing repairs to his keel box and mast bulkhead before an inopportune storm system arrives, he is dealing with mental anguish as his prospects of winning diminish with each mile Desjoyeaux gains.

Jourdain is now 191.2 miles behind Mich’ Desj’, although he has been slightly quicker than the leader. Armel Le Cléac’h was on station as well at the capsized VM Matériaux and it could have been the Brit Air skipper who plucked Le Cam from the sea.
Sam Davies (Roxy) and Marc Guillemot (Safran) were on hand for Yann Eliès.

Brian Thompson, GBR, has been pulling Bahrain Team Pindar apart again to find enough materials to complete his third boatbuilding mission in the Southern Ocean. He has hardly had a settled spell of straight racing since the start, coaxing an untried, extreme boat round the world so the depths of his character have been tested much more than the fine detail of his skills in weather strategy and setting the ideal sailplan.

The ebullient Sam Davies should reach Cape Horn early tomorrow morning, ready to end her own first time solo odyssey in the Southern Ocean, with her Roxy, and head up the Atlantic for her final 30 or so days with the boat which won the 2004 race. She will not have an easy rounding of her third and final Cape on the course. Her race has been well found on complete confidence in a boat which has been round twice, just as the remarkable Rich Wilson has kept faith in his Great American III, which is on her fourth circumnavigation, outlasting his two nearest rivals Jonny Malbon and Derek Hatfield.


Roland Jourdain (Veolia Environnement):  “I was resting, when the boat broached. There wasn't any cracking sound, but the boat came to a standstill. I hit a sea mammal.  I'm not sure what type it was exactly, but when I came outside to get the boat back on course, I saw a bit of the animal and the water was coloured red. The bulkhead at the foot of the mast is cracked to the point that if I did nothing, the mast would simply go through the hull.  With my shore team, we're trying to find a way to spread out the load from the mast and what I can repair I shall.  Yesterday was a day of preparation, between working out what I could do with the materials on board, sanding and filing. Then, last night I fixed the survival panel to the bulkhead at the foot of the mast with some sheets of carbon. I still have a lot of work to do. I've never seen a boat in this state.  It's no longer a racing boat but a boatyard. It's better to laugh about it rather than cry, even if carbon particles aren't that funny.  I'm feeling confident.  I'm lucky with my bad luck though: the seas are smooth and the temperature is climbing... When everything is dry, we'll be off again.  As for the whale, it was me, who invaded his territory, so I can't blame him.”

Rich Wilson, USA (Great American III): “We are about 140 miles off the west end of the western pacific Ice Gate and hoping to get there in about half a day or so, and then hopefully get back down to the south east because there is a big, intense low pressure system which is up on the other side of the high and it is coming down in this direction. So we are just trying to escape that.
I have been pushing hard, but we will see it that is enough. It is one of those perfectly formed lows that you would much rather see in a text book rather than out here on the ocean.
“I think the boat is really strong, it has been around three times and I am sure it has more in it than I am willing to push it, but that is down to my own conservatism, so I think it is a great boat and I guess I am getting more and more comfortable with pushing a little bit more.”
“But so much of it is down to luck one way or another, when Derek Hatfield was rolled over there were three of us all in that same sea state at the same time. I think both Jonny and I commented that at that time it could have happened to any one of the three of us. I think the same happens when there is something in the water. I remember this past evening when we were going pretty fast, just thinking about that the first time I sailed the boat back from France to the US, I hit something on the fifth night out and it fractured the bow shattered the daggerboard, and drove that back through the hull, and broke off one of the rudders. You just never know when that is going to happen, that could happen to any one of us at any time. So that level of uncertainty adds a lot of stress to the situation.”