Sodeb'O and Thomas Coville due in Brest

by Kate Jennings on 17 Jan 2009
Tomorrow morning, on the Maxi Trimaran Sodeb'O, Thomas Coville will arrive in Brest, completing a circumnavigation of the globe in less than 60 days. Setting out nine days after the sailors in the Vendée Globe, the solo sailor will return to France two weeks prior to the frontrunners. Nature has generously let him through but not enough to beat the record.

Positioned 350 miles from Brest at 1600 hours, the sailor is continuing his course in superb fashion. He’s hurtling along towards Brest at a brisk pace. Contacted by telephone this morning, his speedo was displaying 27.8 knots.
Listen to and download the MP3 extracts from the radio session with Thomas Coville this Friday.

1/ The past 24 hours aboard Sodeb'O
http://www.windreportmedia.com/sailing/sodebo/audio/dl.asp?file=tc16012009a_e.mp3

2/ Initial assessment
http://www.windreportmedia.com/sailing/sodebo/audio/dl.asp?file=tc16012009b_e.mp3

'I’m still concentrated because it’s not over and I’m in a zone which will be very complicated to deal with. There’s been a lot of shipping, a fairly strong wind and a very difficult cross sea for several days. I’ve had the same daily routine since the start so no change there. Whether you’re 24 hours from the finish or 30 days, ultimately the concentration levels are exactly the same. On the other hand, I am affected by being outside the reference time on a competitive level. The boat is a little fatigued like me.

There are quite a few jobs to be done here and there and the mainsail sheet block gave up the ghost last night. I’ve got between 25 and 33 knots, downwind, with a W and NW’ly cross swell, which is hampering progress and making things difficult for the pilot to handle… as is the case now. It’s shocking. The boat broaches from time to time. She accelerates very fast and then buries into the wave. There isn’t much visibility. I can’t see the cargo ships and Spanish fishermen which may be on zone. I’m keeping a radar watch around every quarter of an hour approximately. I’ve accumulated a huge amount of sleep deprivation over the past ten days, which is worrying me for the finish. I’ve got some navigation on the horizon and it’s important I carry out some manœuvres'.

'The mainsail travellers are broken, which is making life very complicated. With every manœuvre, prior to every gybe, I have to replace them on the track with warps, which involves creating systems which aren’t simple. As such every manœuvre is slower than before. In the mainsail sheet blocks, the rollers and the bearings have been crushed and last night, in really big seas, they ended up giving up the ghost completely. As a result, I’ve set up a system to make them secure, so that it may be possible for it to serve as a mainsail block'.

'At the start I had three objectives. One was to take the start. That meant designing, building and fine tuning a boat, with the people in my world. We achieved that together. After that, to beat the record, it was necessary to sail the course. However, my personal competitive aim was to beat the record. As regards the team and the overall project, we’ll have succeeded in the first two objectives; however, from a personal point of view, I’ll have failed on the latter, which was the reason I set out. My satisfaction? Never having given up and having been flat out all the way to the finish'.

Retrospective: 60 days around the world, single-handed, on a trimaran.

A fourth round the world for Thomas Coville! From the very first time, he was already sailing under the colours of Sodeb’O, single-handed in a monohull. That was eight years ago during the Vendée Globe. Converting to the multihull, the sailor from La Trinité, Brittany, has today become the third sailor, after Francis Joyon and Ellen MacArthur, to have circumnavigated the globe, single-handed, in a multihull and without stopovers. We take a look back at the past 60 hectic days.

Brest, 18th November 2008, 0800 hours UT. Weather analysis confirms that there’s a favourable window. It’s time to leave. Action stations! Thomas switches to ‘race’ mode. Quayside, Olivier de Kersauson greets his former crew who is setting off on his mission single-handed. At 1354 UT, Sodeb'O crosses the line off the Petit Minou light.

Things get rolling quickly, very quickly. A NNW’ly wind of 25 knots (46 km/hr), flat seas, a sheer delight! Sodeb'O devours the Canaries in three days, Cape Verde in five, and despite squalls as she approaches the Doldrums, the objective is fulfilled: the trimaran crosses the equator in 7 days and 8 minutes, at an average speed of 16.3 knots (30 km/hr). It’s 25th November.

The first obstacle across the route, the Saint Helena High is keeping guard on the gateway to the Deep South. It’s impossible to cut through the middle, either for Thomas, or the sailors in the Vendée Globe, which the skipper of Sodeb'O is catching up one by one. And yet, just a year earlier, Francis Joyon managed to cut straight down the centre. The skipper has to resign himself to the fact that he’ll have to go right around the outside, out to the west, and then descend the Southern Atlantic close-hauled against the waves. These harsh conditions don’t prevent Thomas from racking up a number of days with average speeds in excess of 22 knots (40 km/hr).

On 30th November, Sodeb'O finally hangs a left. The temperature drops, the lows become increasingly virulent. Welcome to the Roaring Forties! The Maxi Trimaran dives eastward and passes the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope on 5th December, after 16 days, 13 hours and 31 minutes of racing, at an average speed of 20.5 knots (38 km/hr). The ‘tour of the parish’ has cost Thomas 800 miles (1480 km). He reaches the Indian Ocean with a deficit of one day and 6 hours on Francis Joyon.

At the entrance to the Indian Ocean, the trimaran slams into a zone of high pressure which she sidesteps to the north. Clutching ponderously onto the train of systems circulating the Southern Ocean, the skipper loses ground. However, the following day, he picks up the pace again. At full bore, on the edge of a low approaching the Kerguelen Islands, Sodeb'O is truly underway once more. On 7th December, the high speed trimaran improves on her own outright record by 10 miles (18 km) for the most distance covered single-handed in 24 hrs: 628.5 miles (1164 km), at an astounding average of 26.2 knots (48.5 km/hr)!

Whist in Paris the French Sailing Federation is rewarding Thomas and Sodeb'O for the North Atlantic record crossing in July, the sailor is taking the brunt of one depression after another in the Indian Ocean he dreads so much. In the Vendée Globe, Loïck Peyron’s boat dismasts; Thomas writes: 'I’m still making headway but my stomach’s been so knotted for several hours that I can no longer sleep or eat and I’m holding my breath every ten seconds.'

Shortly prior to Cape Leeuwin, to the south of Australia, information emerges which will make the skipper’s blood run cold: we’ve spotted a 400 metre long iceberg along Sodeb'O’s trajectory. Thomas will have to desert the Furious Fifties and climb up into safer waters... and hence lengthen the course. Following on from that a new complicated weather transition, then a second, kick in shortly before Tasmania. Thomas makes it to the Pacific Ocean after 25 days and 9 hours at sea. His deficit on IDEC extends to a little over three days.

It’s already been a month since Thomas and his trimaran left Brest... 30 days at the pace of a transatlantic race. Thirty days without breathing, without a minute, or even a second of silence. Thirty days without extracting himself from this washing machine whose spin cycle is endless.

Beneath New Zealand, the solo sailor has to attack the Pacific, but the situation is far from ideal with a low preventing him from dropping down and satellite observations signalling an immense field of icebergs, measuring hundreds of kilometres, to his south. Subject