"I am very sorry to hear about Derek Hatfield breaking his top spreaders in a big knock down, he put in such a massive effort to get to the start line, then having to return, repair and restart again meant that he has then been having to battle storm after storm in the Southern Oceans, when the earlier boats got through the same waters with much better conditions. 24840 is the number. After moving the final ice gate the race committee have settled on this final race distance, about 1000 miles longer than the last race, or about 3 days further in sailing time. So doing some quick maths 24840/2=12420 which is half the course, and I have a mere 12203 to go to the finish, so I am now officially over half way! Last night I passed by 25 miles south of the Auckland Islands, home to tens of thousands of albatross and other seabirds, but with the thick fog I did not see the islands, and the seabirds did not see me, so out here I have unusually little company today. The night before was clear and I was able to see the glow of the Antarctic continent to the south, keeping a faint light on the horizon for the whole night, like the first tinge of dawn. Now, apart from some sub Antarctic islands, I have the entire Pacific Ocean in front of me, with Cape Horn as the destination, tucked away in the bottom right hand corner, 5000 miles away via the ice gates. Lets hope this second half of the race is faster than the first."

Brian Thompson (Bahrain Team Pindar) in his daily message

While Yann Eliès's health will have improved sufficiently to allow him to be flown home on Wednesday 31st December, the GENERALI monohull has been lost at sea.

As the medical teams were busy taking care of Yann following his accident, GENERALI launched an operation to recover the boat. 2 members of Team Generali arrived in Fremantle in Australia and looked for a boat to take them to the zone where the monohull had been abandoned.

On 23rd December, the Race Directors noticed that the positioning beacon on the GENERALI boat was no longer transmitting and were informed by the French Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (CROSS Gris Nez) that the COSPAS SARSAT distress beacon had been triggered. The GENERALI team was immediately informed.

Philippe Laot, the technical director of Yann Eliès's team and Jean-Baptiste Epron, a GENERALI crew member were able to set off in a fishing boat on Wednesday 25th December, but soon encountered very bad wind and sea conditions.

As they were on their way on Friday 26th December, they were told by the GENERALI shore team that the distress beacon had stopped transmitting. It was therefore no longer possible to identify the boat's position. The weather conditions worsened (7-8m high waves and cross seas) and the team was forced to call off the search.
 

Over the past 24 hours, Michel Desjoyeaux (Foncia) currently in the lead, 9957.2 miles from the finish, sailed the greatest distance towards the finish. Between 19h yesterday and this evening, he covered 361.2 miles

That is the final distance in miles for this sixth edition of the Vendée Globe following the decision to move the final Ice Gate further north.
 

At 8h30 local time, 23h30 GMT after sailing for just over ten days following damage to his keel head, Dominique Wavre (Temenos II) entered the harbour in Fremantle during the night with the help of some members from the Ecover and Gitana 80 teams. "I am relieved and proud to have managed to sail Temenos II here. We're a team and I really did all I could to take care of her, so I'm pleased to have arrived. Of course, it hurts giving up the Vendée Globe, and there will always be a degree of frustration, as the race goes on, and I'm looking ahead to the next one, but for the moment, it's a relief just to be here. We hope to put Temenos II on board a container ship in mid-January. The boat is due to arrive in Europe a month or so later. We will then get together with the designers, engineers and experts, to try to understand how and why the keel broke. It seems that Mike had a similar problem. We talked about it when I arrived this morning and we'll be working together to find a solution. In any case, we're going to have to find the means to be able to set sail again with a keel that we can totally rely on. We cannot make any concessions in this area, as the safety of the competitors depends on it.»
 

As the Ice Gates have been moved up, the initial theoretical distance for this Vendée Globe of 24,275 miles has been extended by 450 miles. That is why the distances to the finish have been modified this morning, as the East Pacific Gate is the final one the solo sailors will pass: the Great Circle Route is now around 24,725 miles…