Vendée Globe

December 26. 2008 at 06:45No sign of the wind letting up

"Christmas aboard was a day of fighting with Autopilots, leaking ballast tanks and broken battens trying to jump out of the mainsail. The wind has been at 42kts all last night and today, showing no signs of letting up. The mainsail is looking pretty sad with the top portion of it unsupported, not holding it’s shape at all and I cannot do anything about it until the wind drops off hopefully there will be less wind in about 12-16hrs further to the south."

Derek Hatfield (Algimouss-Spirit of Canada)
 

December 25. 2008 at 20:05Greatest distance over 24 hours

Over the past 24 hours, Jean Pierre Dick (Paprec-Virbac 2)currently in seventh place, 888.2 miles from the leader, sailed the greatest distance towards the finish.  Between 19h yesterday and this evening, he covered 387.2 miles.
 

December 25. 2008 at 17:30Dee in the Top Ten

Dee Caffari (Aviva), the first woman to sail non-stop around the world the wrong way alone has just overtaken Brian Thompson (Bahrain Team Pindar), who after repairing his ballast tanks has had to climb his mast to repair his lazy jacks. She therefore enters the Top Ten, while Sam Davies (Roxy)is now in eighth place
 

December 25. 2008 at 10:54Sam's Christmas presents

"Well, Father Christmas found Roxy last night and I am a very lucky girl! I had loads of presents to open this morning!(still on the Roxy Roller coaster!) And I am not sure I should tell anyone this, but now I am no longer alone! I have MEN on board! A "surfing Ken" (one of Barbie's ex's) and a "Grow your own male stripper"!! Leave that to your imagination!!! They must both be quite freezing, as Ken is in boardshorts and a T-shirt, and the stripper - well - it looks like he's already done his job (except the bow-tie!)
Christmas pants, santa sox, pens, make-up, beauty products, puzzles, games, even a salad growing kit.... I'm going to be busy for the next few weeks playing with all of that! I also had a great video with messages from everyone recorded on it - it made me smile!!"
Sam Davies (Roxy) in her daily message
 

December 25. 2008 at 08:15Broken lazy jack on Fondation Ocean Vital

"Major broach this morning under staysail and 3 reefs in the main. 50-knot squall and some violent gybes. . Some damage - broken lazy jack, a real mess inside. Sailing with three reefs in the mainsail but it's not stable. Trying to find a way to bring down the mainsail without smashing the coach roof and solar panels. Very high seas"
Raphael Dinelli (Fondation Ocean Vital)
 

December 25. 2008 at 07:48Moped with kangaroo juice

"Father Christmas has not been kind. How on Earth can I open my presents heeled over at 25° with my "moped" jumping around like a kangaroo? This was not forecast. We'll manage somehow I suppose, but it's not nice. I should have remained on the other side of the International Date Line. I could have cheated by opening things, while the seas were still reasonable. Got to go now to take in a reef..."
Michel Desjoyeaux (Foncia) in his Christmas Day message
 

December 25. 2008 at 07:21Temporary setback for Steve

"As I sit and write this, listening to my Christmas CD, I can see on my starboard side white foam covering the backs of the waves as they go away from me, and to the port side a confused and heaped, untidy sea with haphazard waves left by the big wind shift we had last night, all a glorious deep blue under a bright sun. To windward there is a huge and ominous black cloud that looks like it will be trouble - we have already had a few squalls where the wind goes from thirty to fifty five knots quicker than you can count and suddenly I am not under-canvassed any more - the sea becomes a total white-out with sleet and rain and the boat charges off like a mad thing banging and crashing into the big cross sea at over twenty knots and threatening to shake the generator loose and rattle the teeth from your head. The barometer is as low as it can go but still falling, and I don't have a proper handle on the weather situation as it is very confused and complicated at the moment, and to top it alI I am really having to nurse the boat as the gooseneck pin which holds the boom to the deck has broken, and if I am not careful the boom will come off - that problem has finished a few people's races, but I am sure there is a way to repair it, just not at the moment - it's difficult enough to stand up - so all in all not ideal really, and not how I thought Christmas would be a couple of days ago. Still, it will calm down and I will get the boom off and sort it out - nothing last for ever. This is a temporary setback, and you have to offset it against the good stuff, it could be much worse and I am here of my own choosing - if I had to close the toolbox I'd get bored anyway just sailing and watching the birds! If anyone has a book entitled "How to make a lathe using a marine diesel engine, a screwdriver and other things commonly found on an IMOCA 60" I would very much like to hear from them, that would be a great present!"
Steve White (Toe in the Water) in his daily blog
 

December 25. 2008 at 06:50Derek takes a battering

"It’s Christmas Eve and all we want from Santa is to get through the next few low pressure systems. We have been fighting a storm since yesterday afternoon; it started with 35kts of wind but built to 47kts at times. The waves have been building all day, there was no relief from the wind. the
boat has been knocked down three times, once particularly bad and resulted in some damage to the mainsail battens. Below deck is soaked which changes the quality of life aboard very quickly as things don’t really get a chance to dry once they are wet. The weather file shows little chance of
letting up over the next couple of days so we have four reefs in the mainsail, not as much racing going on as survival at times."
Derek Hatfield (Algimouss-Spirit of Canada)in his daily message sent during the night
 

December 24. 2008 at 20:05Greatest distance over 24 hours

Over the past 24 hours, Vincent Riou (PRB) currently in sixth place, 379.4 miles from the leader, sailed the greatest distance towards the finish.  Between 19h yesterday and this evening, he covered 380.9 miles.
 

December 24. 2008 at 18:05Sixty knot winds for Brian

"After the repairs had been finished at dawn yesterday, I slowly started sailing and the boat was going fine, ahead of the cold front in 40-50 knots of wind and the repair was holding. The cold front arrived just after dawn this morning and it was quite an unusual one, with the wind dropping and going into the west (which is normal), but then going into the south and blowing at 30 knots, which was not on any of the weather charts, and was a very big shift. This was a critical test for the repairs as the seas were shocking at this point, with the two differing wind directions and the boat was doing some serious slamming. I was so glad of the calm weather I had to do the repair properly; otherwise this would have been a bad place to be with a broken boat. Then the wind turned more SW and kept on increasing until it was a steady 50-60 knots for hour after hour. The seas were starting to build and the pilot was not liking the way the stern was getting thrown around by the mainsail. One thing that the design office had said was that extreme rudder load transfers through the boat to that front longitudinal would work it hard, so all things considered I decided to take the main down till the wind had subsided. So I tried to get the mainsail lowered going downwind, it was not budging, so I turned onto a reach in 55 knots and let the halyard down, it moved – but just a tiny bit. I was going to have to climb on the boom and pull the luff down by hand. This was a massive effort, but I eventually got it down, inch by inch. Whenever I let go of the sail it would shoot up again,  so it was 2 steps forward, and one step back to get the sail down. By the time I got back to the cockpit my finger tips were in pain from both the cold and clawing the sail down. I felt a bond with those common seamen standing on the yards of their square riggers, fighting to get the sails shortened on to the yards. 
As it was getting dark, the wind had dropped enough to try to raise the main. But I soon saw that the leeward lazy had broken and I would have to go up the mast to run a new lazyjack, not too high, maybe 8 metres, and then put up the mainsail. I was certain I could not get this all done by dark and it’s too tricky an operation to raise the main on your own in 35 knots without being able to see what is happening. So I decided to put up a bigger headsail and tidy up the boat, so that I am ready for the morning, when the wind and seas should be lighter too. I am glad that I made that choice as, in going round the boat, I saw that the force of the sea had dislodged both the man overboard module and the liferaft from the stern. The liferaft was just attached by its painter, so I was pretty close to seeing it inflate and be dragged off behind the boat. Fortunately, we all have another liferaft, but this is the better one of the two. It's now safely lashed at the front of the cockpit and I will have to tell the race committee that the seal on the liferaft is broken.It is unsurprising that 60 knots is not good for the speed or for reliability. I really had not expected this much wind, but again, its all part of the rich experience of the Vendee Globe race. So I am stuck for a few Christmas Eve hours going slowly."

Brian Thompson (Bahrain Team Pindar) in his daily message