Vendée Globe

Dee Caffari’s celebrations will have to wait, but the British solo sailor passed the longitude of Cape Horn at 1015hrs GMT this morning in eighth place, her third time past the Rock.

It was her first time in the ‘right’ direction – passing west to east, from the Pacific to the

, but her second time sailing on her own.

Caffari was urging Aviva at the limit of the speeds produced by her damaged mainsail to get to the east of the Isla de Estados, making 10-11 knots in 35-45 knots of SW’ly wind with gusts to 55 knots and a barometer which was rising. Caffari reported this afternoon that all was good on board Aviva… ‘though after a month in the Southern Ocean 35 knots feels surprisingly normal’.

Caffari has remained in close contact with Arnaud Boissières throughout and was three miles behind Akena Veranda, making three knots quicker than the French skipper as they ran parallel courses about 40 miles apart.

Brian Thompson, GBR, (Bahrain Team Pindar) left the shelter of the Isla de Estados just before midday too and was making good progress towards the Falkland Islands although he was expecting a very tough afternoon, before the stormy south westerlies are due to abate by around 2100hrs this evening.

Jean Le Cam (VM Matériaux) and Vincent Riou (PRB) spoke to a packed press conference this afternoon at the Race HQ adjacent to the Gare Montparnasse in the centre of Paris. Le Cam talked about he tried to keep focused and make simple decisions in the minutes after his boat capsized, later joking about how amazing their situation was when they passed close to Cape Horn together, the rescuer and the rescued in the same boat, first and second placed skipper from the last race. He said they made sure they were as close in as possible, just 24 hours before PRB’s mast came down.

Le Cam, in particular, said that he cannot walk away from the Vendée Globe like this and definitely wants to be back again in 2012, whilst representatives of both the skippers’ sponsors acknowledged that their association with the Vendée Globe remains a very positive one, and in principle their respective decisions to return would be based on economic decisions and would review their projects, but both made positive comments about the future. .  

Meantime at the front of the fleet the gains of Michel Desjoyeax on Foncia continue today and he now leads by 294 miles over Roland Jourdain.

Vincent Riou (PRB):  “The priority was to know whether Jean was OK, whether he was still aboard, as we hadn't had any news from him. Knowing that he was inside had reassured me. I had prepared a few things to throw against the boat to tell him I was there. When it's windy it's not easy to shout and be heard.  I passed close by and missed the first time. I shouted and went by again.  I threw a tin of food against the boat and that must have been heard inside.  I continued to scream.  It would be great to have something that makes a noise on the boats, because after five attempts at trying to make myself heard I had lost my voice.  Then I heard Jean shouting inside and banging on the hull.  Then, he signalled he was there with the flag through the seacock  before offering us a firework display!  I must admit he frightened me with that, as it could easily have ended up in PRB's mainsail.  He was doing what he could to show he was there.  There had been no direct communications, although we knew he was there.  The lack of communications  worried me as I reckoned there was a serious problem.  You tend to feel pessimistic in these circumstances. You end up imagining the worst. 

Jean Le Cam, (VM Matériaux): “I lost track of time.  I was in the bow section looking at the distress flares. They usually have a lot of instructions in small print, which is not very practical in the dark. When there are three pages of instructions, you are afraid you might miss something and it will explode in your face.  I found one that looked easy with a big arrow on it.  I said to myself that with a bit of luck it would just about go through the seacock. It was the same diameter in fact. Just fitted through the hull, but a bit of a squeeze. It had to get through or it would explode in front of me.   The first one went through the  emergency hatch into the water. Then, I fired a second one. But I noticed then I was gassing myself. Flares like that give off a lot of smoke.  There was a lot of smoke inside so I said that was enough of the messing around. I'll just stick with the little flag from now on.”  

Jean Le Cam, (VM Matériaux): “The first rule is not to leave the boat, so before deciding to come out I went back to the stern a few times, and I could see the gennaker was in the way and there was a lot of gear floating around. So I took it in stages.  The first thing to do was to tie up the gennaker, as it weighs 60kg and if you get caught between that and something else, it could be a bit of a problem. Then, I said I needed to open the hatch. My fear was of losing all the air. But as it was at the stern, that wasn't a real risk.  So I opened it.  When I opened it, it broke.  Everything floated out by itself.  At that point things became clearer.”

“ Four years ago, we were arch-rivals. (Le Cam christened Riou ‘Vincent Le Terrible’) And there we were on PRB together rounding the Horn. So I said we should pass close by as last time it was at night, and with Tabarly, we were a long way off. So we had the opportunity of passing close.  It was an exceptional situation.  You couldn't have invented this story.  Of course it had to be Vincent who turned up. And there we were rounding the Horn together and then 24 hours we lost the mast...

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