Vendee Globe - Thomson holds edge in a testing final week

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com NZ on 15 Jan 2017 The two lead boats in the Vendee Globe have a difficult few days ahead as they line up for the finish in Les Sables-d'Olonne, on the west coast of France.

Over the past two days, the race leader Armel Le Cleac'h has maintained a lead of 100nm over second placed Alex Thomson, who led the fleet at the first major turning point - Cape of Good Hope, before losing the lead after breaking his starboard DSS foil and was unable to deploy it on port tack.

The two lead boats are current sailing at speeds of around 20 kts with Le Cleac'h in Banque Populaire V adopting the conservative tactic of staying between his competitor and the mark/finish line.

Using the weather routing function of Predictwind.com the leading wind and weather prediction software it shows a large area of light airs and adverse winds lying in the direct path of the two lead boats and the finish line at Les Sables.

The Predictwind routing pushes the two lead boats well to the west and north of the direct route, sailing an extra 200nm or more as a trade-off to both stay in a reasonable breeze on a favoured point of sailing.

Alex Thomson probably holds most of the cards in the final play of the race which will see the winner take around 75 days to complete their solo non-stop circumnavigation.

Firstly he is sufficiently far behind to be difficult to cover. It will be Thomson's choice as to whether he takes the optimised route or breaks with the lead boat and tries to tip-toe through the vagaries of the wind patterns/options between him and the finish. With the third placed boat Jeremie Beyou 500nm astern he has plenty of lead to spend. Le Cleac'h has the triple dilemma of whether to just follow the Great Circle route to the finish - being the shortest distance. His problem is that he has to make the first move. Secondly, whatever option he takes, it will probably be Banque Populaire V which has to initiate the split, for the simple reason that if she takes the optimised route she is committing to the longer distance. Thirdly le Cleac'h is the one most at risk of the weather data and forecasts changing and always in that situation the shortest direct route is best.

The second key factor in Thomson's favour is if the boats elect to follow the Predictwind optimised route, they will be on starboard tack, meaning that Thomson will be able to use his remaining DSS foil as they sail in winds of 18 - 20 kts for the next day or so and then the winds ease down to 15kts. Given that Thomson has already demonstrated his superior boat speed when sailing on the first 'leg' of the round the world race - setting the fastest single-handed monohull time to the Equator and then missing the 24hour monohull solo sailing record by a few hundred metres. (Thomson beat the old mark but has to do so by 1nm for the record to be considered to have been properly broken.) So there is no doubt that Thomson has the legs to do the job.

Thomson's third trump card is that he is the only sailor in the fleet to use sails from the Doyle Sails NZ loft - which is stacked with experts in round the world sailing. There is little doubt that some of his basic speed advantage, when able to deploy his DSS foil, comes from the sail inventory and optimisation from the Doyles team. Le Cleac'h's basic problem is that he has to be able to stay in front of a boat which is inherently faster.

In the past few weeks, we have seen the lead boat's margin shrink from almost 900nm at one point to just 34nm and then concertinaing from 100-130nm as they traverse some patches of light airs, and speeds have dropped to under 4kts from sustained periods, while the other has managed 12kts or more.

There will be plenty of questions asked of the two lead boats in the final week of the Vendee Globe. The responses will be difficult and critical to the outcome of the race.