This evening, the Village bar, The VOG’ will welcome the Beach Band from Les Sables at 9.30. Jazz and swing on the programme this evening…

Spirit of Weymouth, Steve White’s monohull, was today treated to a little facelift on the underwater section of the hull. Lifted onto the hard yesterday, her undersides were entrusted to Karcher to remove the algae and barnacles, which were beginning to grow. The British skipper has to touch-up a little of the coating prior to applying some protective underwater paint and returning her to the liquid element.

Armel Le Cléac’h, Marc Thiercelin, Bernard Stamm (Cheminées Poujoulat) and Roland Jourdain (Veolia Environnement) were transformed into fashion models for Gala magazine during a photo session. They had their hair done, got made-up and dressed-up and played the game with a certain ease… despite amused grins from their shore crews!

Hugo Boss came under the knife this morning as the six strong team of boatbuilders got to work on cutting away the damaged area of Alex Thomson’s wounded Open 60. David Duff, Shore Operations Manager for Team ORIGIN, who is helping with the logistics and project management of the repair reported today that the new replacement panel should arrive this evening from Vannes. Their operational target is to re-step the mast Friday 31st with the objective of sailing again Sat 1st November.Duff´s boss Mike Sanderson, who was in Les Sables d´Olonne until Monday night and is skippering a Transatlantic record attempt, is being kept up to date with progress. (Hear David Duff in the audio section of www.vendeeglobe.org.)

The Vendée Globe village is forecast to experience another fine, sunny day thanks to a 1030 hPa high-pressure area stretching from the Azores to Germany. The temperatures remain stable between 9 and 14°C. A very light southerly wind can be expected today.

Tide times in Les Sables d’Olonne:
Thursday 23rd October 2008: coefficient 45 – 48
High tide: 1h23 – 13h47
Low tide: 6h28 – 19h22
Friday 24th October 2008 : coefficient 53 – 58
High tide: 2h25 – 14h47
Low tide: 7h44 – 20h28

That was the number of visitors to the Vendée Globe village during the first weekend of it being open. The week has got off to a good start with visits from the first groups of schoolchildren, in spite of some dull weather on Monday. More than 10,000 children are expected to attend during the three weeks leading up to the start of the race. With the sun returning, the conditions are once again ideal for a trip to visit the pontoons and all the events going on in the Vendée Globe village.