Vendee Globe – Third Place is a Charm
Michel Desjoyeaux sailed Foncia into Les Sables D’Olonne last week to win his second Vendée Globe Race. But the latest edition of this nonstop, singlehanded around the world race is hardly over. Second place finisher Armel Le Cléac’h is also in port. But the battle for third is shaping up to be one of the best contests in the six runnings and 20-year history of the race.
On one side is Samantha Davies, the ultimate sweetheart of this rodeo. With her pink-liveried boat Roxy, endless smiles and always optimistic daily updates, Sam seems to have loved virtually every minute of the contest, right from the start last November. For a first-timer she has also sailed an amazing race. Perhaps not Ellen MacArthur caliber — yet — she’s still managed to sail into third place after 26,000 miles of racing. Considering there are only 11 boats still sailing out of 30 that started last November, just the fact that Roxy is still upright and moving is an achievement in itself.
Not so lucky for her main competition, Mark Guillemot’s Safran, which lost its keel on February 8 with about 1,000 miles left to go to the finish. (He felt the failure stemmed from a collision with a whale in mid-December.) Guillemot decided he’d come too far to drop out now and is continuing on under water ballast, triple-reefed main and staysail. Davies caught and passed Guillemot a couple of days ago and is working hard to stretch her lead, but weather patterns seem to indicate light and flukey air for the remainder of the race. At this writing, she was averaging only a knot or two better speed than Guillemot’s 9- to 11-knot average.
The further twist is that both Guillemot and Davies are owed redress for diverting to the aid of Yann Elias in December. You may recall that Elias suffered a broken leg while working the foredeck of his boat and was later medevac’ed to shore. Guillemot gets more time than Davies, so in order to beat him fair and square, she has to finish at least 50 hours ahead of Safran to secure third place. Whether she can pull that off will be a cliffhanger to the end. She hopes to finish, somewhat appropriately, on Valentine’s Day.
And if that’s not enough, whoever does end up finishing third will share the podium with Vincent Riou. You may recall that he went to the rescue of Jean Le Cam after his VM Materiaux boat lost its keel bulb and capsized in early January. During the rescue, Riou’s PRB suffered damage to one of his outriggers which led to a dismasting the following day. The unprecedented redress to third place was made, in part, for that placing’s share of the prize money to pay for repairs to the boat.
For more on the most exciting Vendée Globe ever, go to www.vendeeglobe.org/en/.