Vendee Update

Leaders are now off the coast of Brazil

Now two weeks into this Vendée Globe race, the dust is beginning to settle on an ever-shrinking fleet of Open 60’s that is rapidly reaching South, the equator in their wakes and Roaring 40’s over the horizon. A definite pecking order has been established by this point of the race with the fleet compressing in the doldrums, only to stretch back out in it’s original formation. At the top of the fleet, the sisterships “Banque Populaire” and “MACIF” still lead with the fleet’s other two VPLP’s, “PRB” and “Virbac-Paprec 3”still in hot pursuit. The latter 3 boats quickly legged out on the Juan K designed “Cheminees Poujoulat” and previous generation Farr “Hugo Boss” after the 5 boats found themselves virtually re-starting the Vendée in the doldrums, oftentimes drifting around as one 5-boat cluster of carbon and flogging racing sails.

Bernard Stamm’s “Cheminees Poujoulat” even flogged a genoa so hard in the light-air mess after a squall that the sail ripped itself on a daggerboard! Meanwhile, the 3 oldest skippers in the fleet continue to sail in close formation some 300 miles back of the leaders, while Acciona and skipper “Bubi” Sanso attempt to bridge the gap and re-engage the middle of the pack, having cleared the doldrums while the fleet’s backmarkers are still floundering in the dreaded ITCZ, called “the worst ever” by previous Vendée winner Vincent Riou. And in an unfortunate announcement that many of us saw coming, Polish skipper “Gutek” has officially abandoned the race on “Energa”, and has sailed to port in the Canary Islands. The leaders are now approaching a complex Saint Helena High which will create opportunities to gain miles on competitors.

BREAKING NEWS: Vincent Riou on “PRB” has hit a floating metal “buoy” and has sustained damage to the bow of his Open 60. He will be evaluating the situation and making necessary repairs if feasible. The hull has become torn and delaminated for about one meter on the starboard side of the bow. This comes just a week after Riou’s last scare, when he hit a floating tree trunk at 18 knots.

7 skippers penalized for violating Traffic Separation Scheme off Finisterre

Following the protest by both “Hugo Boss” and the Race Committee, 7 boats in the fleet have been penalized for violating the Finisterre Traffic Separation scheme. Seeing as how two fishing boats were hit by screaming Open 60’s with presumably sleeping skippers, this is an issue that the Vendée Globe is taking very seriously. The penalized boats were “Synerciel, Mirabaud, Acciona, Initiatives-couer and Energa”, who were all given 2-hour time penalties. “Gamesa” was given a 30-minute penalty and “Virbac-Paprec 3” was given a 20-minute penalty. Javier Sanso on “Acciona” and Tanguy de Lamotte on “Initiatives-couer” both appealed the jury’s ruling, but lost their appeals. Per race rules, the skippers had two days to take their penalties, and all have now done so.

Gutek officially retires

Polish skipper Zbigniew “Gutek” Gutkowski has retired to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. The previous generation Finot/ Conq design (ex-Hugo Boss) had been plagued with problems since Day 1, and most recently had sustained autopilot failures which reported in his crash-gybing and badly wrapping a gennaker around his forestay. Sailing East to test both of his autopilots after updating the software, he had to resign himself to his inner thoughts:

“Today I need to officially announce what I’ve been thinking about for days.. Being brave is not only about fighting, it is also about knowing where to stop. I know I did everything I could, working on my electronics issues for many days. I know my team and friends did their best as well. And I am extremely grateful for the huge support I got. But I can’t carry on like that. When there is big wind and when the boat is going over 15 knots the autopilot starts to live a second life, doing whatever it wants.... Having no autopilot means I can’t race, and if I can’t race, I have to retire.”

Beyou’s keel jack failure...

Jeremie Beyou, skipper of “Maitre CoQ”, has discovered what may be an explanation for his keel jack failure: “It probably happened as we were leaving the front off the Canary Islands. There was a 40-knot wind and a very rough cross sea. As I was going down after surfing a wave, I must have hit a UFO with the side of my keel bulb, because you can clearly see an impact there. This probably put an unusual pressure on the keel head. And then time passed and a couple of days later, the jack head broke because it had been weakened by the shock. After a thorough analysis of the part and discussions with experts, that's te likeliest explanation”, says the two-time Figaro winner.