The Transat Jacque Vabre’s history of attrition

by David Schmidt, Sail-World North America on 29 Oct 2015 Look at our latest news from the Transat Jacques Vabre (TJV) race, which is currently carrying a fleet of Class 40s, IMOCA 60s, Multi 50s, and ‘Ultims’ (maxi trimarans) 5,450 miles from Le Harve, France to Itajai, Brazil, and you immediately notice two things. First off, the race’s start date of October 25 should send off warning bells in the minds of anyone who is familiar with North Atlantic conditions as autumn deepens, and the number of abandonments (read: racecourse attrition) also speaks volumes about the kinds of conditions that the double-handed teams have been facing since Sunday’s start.

At the time of this writing, there have been six “normal” retirements (three IMOCA 60s, two Class 40s, one Multi 50) and one capsize, the later suffered by Lionel Lemonchois and Roland Jourdain aboard the 76-foot trimaran Prince de Bretagne. According to reports, inside this issue, the two Frenchmen switched on their EPIRB on Tuesday (October 27) after flipping their rig while sailing upwind in 15-17 knots of air. The two sailors were fortunately rescued via helicopter and are no doubt plotting ways to salvage their high-performance offshore machine. This is the second capsize for Lemonchois with the same steed, in January 2014, he was rescued from the same upturned boat 800 nautical miles off Brazil.

While this casualty rate seems high at first blush (seven out of an initial field of 42 boats), if you’ve been following the biennial TJV for a number of event cycles, you understand that late October/early November are miserable months to be sailing down the English Channel, across the top of the Bay of Biscay, and out into the open Atlantic.

And while plenty of these IMOCA skippers signed on to the TJV as a way of seriously shaking down their boats before next year’s Vendee Globe, all participants knew that this would be a lumpy race. After all, there’s plenty of TJV history to prove that this race is no milk-run Atlantic crossing.

Take, for example, the 2013 TJV, which saw six boats abandon racing out of a fleet of 44 starters, or the 2011 TJV, which had to be postponed by 74 hours due to seriously rough weather. Even after the postponement, the 2011 TJV fleet saw 15 boats out of 35 starters retire. Likewise, 2009 saw six abandonments out of a starting fleet of 20.

The 2007 edition was a fairly mellow affair (as far as TJV races go), with only 4 boats retiring out of a starting fleet of 30, while 2005 saw 12 boats out of a starting fleet of 35 retire.

Delve deeper into the TJV’s history, and 1993-the race’s inaugural year (when the event was still known as the Route du Café)-saw the least amount of attrition, as only a single boat (Vincent Riou’s Maitre Coq) out of a starting fleet of 12 yachts was forced to abandon racing.

So what is it about this race that continues to draw so many talented sailors into the cold, windy and wet grasp of the North Atlantic in late October (or early November)? For the IMOCA 60 sailors, next year’s Vendee Globe is the obvious gravity, but for the other sailors the attraction is likely the opportunity to line up against some of the world’s best in a now-storied drag race to South America.

And while the North Atlantic can be angry this time of year, the South Atlantic typically delivers kinder conditions as the boats plunge southward to 26 degrees south (Itajai’s latitude), so hopefully the next several days will spell the end of this year’s abandonments. As of this writing, the two lead Ultims-Sodebo Ultim and Macif-are off the coast of Africa, north of the Canary Islands, and are reporting speeds in the high-teens/low-20s.

Then, of course, there's the French connection. A glance at the scratch sheet reveals that the majority of the skippers are French, which is not surprising given the fact that the race starts in Le Harve; it's also not surprising given the French sailing culture's effervescent attitude towards embracing technology and innovation. And while there are plenty of French speakers in the IMOCA and Class 40, there's no escaping the fact that the French truly love the 'Ultims' and the mind-bending speeds that they are capable of delivering, given the right offshore conditions.'

But ... with the bleeding edge technology comes some inevitable structural failure and retirements and so it goes today, with the latest being Alex Thomson and Guillermo Altadill hove to reporting technical problems.

There will no doubt be more, because this is the nature of this race.