Vendée Globe

Marc Guillemot (Safran) should finish his epic Vendée Globe this evening, ready to collect a well deserved third place. For all that he will enjoy the result he is perhaps the skipper of all 30 who started who returns to Les Sables d’Olonne with the richest store of unique memories from this race.

He has battled through early disappointment and a loss of confidence when he was stuck in calms by the Canaries, had to replace his daggerboard after hitting a sea mammal and raced to stand by the injured Yann Elies until the Generali skipper was evacuated by the Royal Australian Navy.

Guillemot pit-stopped twice – in the Auckland Islands and the Falklands Islands – to try and repair his damaged mainsail track.  Up the coast of Brasil he dodged fishing nets, local shipping traffic and oil platforms and was just 20 miles off the coast as he sought better breeze while dueling with Sam Davies.

Suddenly on 9^th February he told of a keel problem which had been worrying him and later that day Safran’s keel dropped out of the boat. Since then the skipper from La Trinité has been on edge, relying only on water ballast and careful sail control to keep Safran upright over the last 1000 miles.

Safran is was less than 70 miles from the finish line this afternoon, making 8.4 knots and so should be in between 20 hours GMT and 2230 hours GMT approximately.

Battling for a place on the podium and focusing on the finishing line in this sixth Vendée Globe, Guillemot’s typical generosity is underlined by his finish plans.  The skipper of Safran has invited all those forced out of the race, who were unable to finish aboard their own boats to be on board in the channel. 

Jean Le Cam, Roland Jourdain and Kito de Pavant will be aboard the grey and orange monohull as Guillemot makes his way into the harbour. 

They will share with Guillemot the pleasure of arriving in Les Sables d'Olonne and those magical moments.

Yann Eliès will also be taking part in the celebration aboard a RIB alongside Safran, making, as Guillemot shares his enjoyment widely.

Brian Thompson should secure his fifth place in the early hours of Monday morning on Bahrain Team Pindar, the powerful Juan K design completing its first ever offshore race of any description. Thompson’s satisfaction will be not only in securing a great finishing place from the 30 boat fleet, but in nursing the untested boat back in one piece. His repairs have been virtually constant since Mid December, indeed he remarked on Friday that he had enjoyed two days of consistent sailing for the first time in a long time without having to fix anything.

Thompson has been pushed hard to the finish by Dee Caffari, GBR, (Aviva). The pair have been close since the South Atlantic but Thompson lead by 470 miles in the Inidan Ocean to the south of Australia and were then apart by 300 miles after the Doldrums, but this evening as they battle to the line Caffari is just 33 miles behind her compatriot and is due to finish during Monday morning.

Arnaud Boissières, Akena Vérandas: “ I’m in the middle of the Azores with Azores weather.  It’s dull with squalls.  I need to hurry up as the Vendée Globe bar is going to close and so my team is telling me to finish before Sunday.  I’ve had a bit more wind since yesterday afternoon. I gybed in the night and now I’m sailing along decently, but on a route that is a bit north of the direct route.   It’s overcast with heavy rain clouds, so it’s on with the boots and woolly hat. So it’s not too bad.  The t-shirt and shorts are OK for a quiet sail and a cocktail with friends.  In a couple of days I’m going to be slowed down again.  I’ve got the generator running as there’s no sunshine and I have around twenty litres of fuel left.  If there’s a week to ten days left, that should be OK.  I still have one dried sausage left, which I’ll eat today.  Apart from that, I’ve got enough food for six days.  I don’t want to spend time fishing as I’m concentrating on getting in quickly.  And I’m going too fast to catch anything anyway.  I’m in a hurry to finish, as the boat is starting to get a bit tired.  And the sailor too.   When I see others finishing, that encourages me to want to finish too.  When we did the BToB race from Brazil, we didn’t have these conditions.  I’ve had calms all the way up from Uruguay.   Cape Horn may appear to be the moment of relief, but there’s still a lot of sailing to do after that.  The equipment really suffers.  Even when there is not much wind as there is the effect of the sunlight and the squalls.  I hope I’m reaching the end of the calms, as it’s been a bit like the Doldrums from Uruguay right up to the Canaries.”

Raphaël Dinelli (Fondation Ocean Vital): “I’m sailing upwind with a heavy swell, but I’m quite pleased, as I’ve passed the latitude of Rio.   The weather was very tricky down there with heavy rain, and a series of lows developing making the weather extremely tiring for the boat and my nerves.  Now, I’ve found the trade winds, which should allow me to sail up the coast of Brazil.  I’m feeling rather tired after all these days of struggling in these low-pressure systems. It wasn’t very stable, so everything kept changing every 12-24 hours and that meant a lot of sail changes. I had fifty knots downwind and then fifty knots upwind.   It was very tricky, but things are getting better now.  I think I’ll be moving away from the Brazilian coast to get away from the current heading down towards me.  And there are a lot of cumulus clouds along the coast, making it a bit like a mini version of the Doldrums.  I’m hoping to get a steady trade wind, which will enable me to get to the Equator in five days and then the North Atlantic. I know the American ahead of me, Rich, had some very, very difficult days where the trade winds were just not there and I hope to avoid that. Perhaps I’ll be lucky.    

I’m looking at my charts and my progress four and eight years ago to see whether I’m ahead or behind schedule.  For the moment, I’m slightly behind where I as four years ago, but I can make that up.  I should arrive before the 15th March.  A couple of days ago, I took stock of what is left and it looks fine.  In the low-pressure system, I had some damage.  My gas stove broke, so I spent a morning working on that. More seriously I lost my radar support, and so don’t have any radar or echo finder working.  A couple of days ago, I was heading straight for a cargo vessel and by chance I missed it.  I’m reaching an area where there a lot of cargo ships, so I hope to get at least the minimum working.  As we’re spending longer at sea, we have more repairs to carry out.  Down below, I found some screws lying around.  The more slamming we do, the more things work loose, so we need to do constant checks on the communication system, the instruments, the lines, everything out on deck… so we need to be increasingly vigilant.    And now with oil tankers, cargo vessels and so on.”

More Eng audio with Dee Caffari, Brian Thompson and Steve White on www.vendeeglobe.org

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