Vendee Globe Update
Attrition is a constant in the Vendée Globe Race. Now that most of the 19 boats remaining — out of the 30 that started — are about halfway around the world, it looks like the amount of attrition is well on its way to the 50% mark many people have come to expect. Given that the entire fleet has been lashed by winds to 65 knots in the Indian Ocean already, not to mention the 50 knots they got on the race’s first night, it’s pretty amazing there are still 19 boats still racing. There’s ice, and apparently lots of it, which hasn’t been respecting the sanctity of the race organizers’ "Ice Gates" — mandatory waypoints the boats must pass that are intended to keep them from pushing too far south.
After sailing solidly in the lead for the last week or so, Jean-Pierre Dick’s Paprec-Virbac II collided with an unidentified object that broke the casing of one of his rudders, forcing him to slow down. This allowed Mike Golding — who’s had plenty of ’round the world disasters himself — to slip into the lead. But it wasn’t to last. In a 50-knot squall, Golding’s Ecover III became the race’s most recent dismasting.
Swiss sailor Dominique Wavre was forced to divert to the Kerguelen Islands with keel-head damage which rendered his Temenos II‘s canting keel uncontrollable. Wavre settled into Morbihan Bay in order to effect repairs which have since proven unsuccessful. He’s issued a pan pan and donned his survival suit, unable to return to the Kerguelens in the stronger-than-forecasted 45-knot breezes he left in.
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Also making a stop at the Kerguelens was Bernard Stamm’s Cheminées Poujoulat. Stamm elected to divert there to fix some nagging problems, but ended up creating another. While attempting to pick up a mooring set up for him by the French crew that mans this remote island outpost, Cheminées Poujoulat went aground in 45 knots of breeze, punching a hole in the boat’s port side. Fortunately for Stamm, the cargo vessel that services the island was able to hoist the boat aboard after she was refloated, and both boat and skipper are en route to Reunion Island.
New leader Michel Desjoyeaux aboard Foncia — who restarted from Les Sables d’Olonne some two days late — is cranking along at about 50° south, some 800 miles south of Cape Leeuwin, Australia, in a fairly tight peloton with Roland Jourdain’s Veolia Environment, Jean Le Cam’s VM Matériaux and Seb Josse’s BT.