Vendee Globe - Keep on trucking

by Vendee Globe on 28 Jan 2017 Other than the next two skippers who are expected to finish into Les Sables d'Olonne, Louis Burton around the 31st of January next week and Nandor Fa about a week later, many of the skippers still racing have endured some kind of technical issues or damage, some more serious than others.

Remember Romain Attanasio (Mary-Étamine du Lys family) having to stop into South Africa to repair his rudders, Alan Roura (La Fabrique) replacing his rudder, Conrad Colman (Foresigh Natural Energy) and Arnaud Boissières (La Mie Câline), Didac Costa (One Planet-One Ocean) all now with limited, tired sails, Sébastien Destremau (TechnoFirst-faceOcean) stopping to check and repair his rig in Tasmania and Pieter Heerema (No Way Back) with his perpetual pilot problems.

But even the most recent finishers are not immune from damage, Jean-Pierre Dick (StMichel-Virbac) who told his press conference in Les Sables d'Olonne that his hydraulic keel system failed at the Ile de Yeu, just a handful of miles from the finish line.

That is one of the fundamental difficulties of the Vendée Globe, race 24,500 miles alone and with no outside help, autonomous, dealing with everything that the elements throw at you for more than 80 days. Fix, fix, fix and fix again to keep going, flat calm to storm.

Almost two and a half months after the start gun, two soloists are still in the southern oceans Sébastien Destremau still has one full day of racing before he gets into Drake's Passage - the stretch of water between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands to the south. Pieter Heerema (No Way Back) Which is still in the South Atlantic sailing at 46° S bordering the Antarctic Exclusion Zone (ZEA). Destremau is in a southern depression with more than 40 knots from the northwest but within 24 hours the weather ease for him. Heerema benefits from a front as he heads towards the St. Helena high, but the end of the day looks more difficult as he reaches an anticyclonic bubble.

Off Uruguay, Romain Attanasio is still a few miles ahead of Didac Costa and they will have to zigzag between the windless cells on their the course to Cape Frio. The four boats in front have erratic winds still on the edge of this St. Helena high. Rich Wilson (Great America IV) and Alan Roura are alternating between stop and go, while ahead of them Arnaud Boissières and Fabrice Amedeo (Newrest-Matmut) have finally got into the long-awaited but very challenging Easterlies

Two hundred miles from the equator, Éric Bellion (CommeUnSeulHomme) chose to enter the Doldrums at 32° West where they seems least active and Conrad Colman follows his trail 250 miles further behind.

As for Nándor Fa (Spirit of Hungary) at the latitude of the Cape Verde archipelago, moderate trade winds from the east allow the Hungarian skipper to gradually curve his course towards the north, but it still has a thousand miles before he can hook into an Atlantic depression.

At 300 miles to the SW of the Azores, Louis Burton (Bureau Vallée) could not hold on to the low which allowed him to lengthen his stride yesterday. And so today he is in a transition zone. As of tomorrow Sunday he will be into another depression and more than 25 knots of SW'ly winds. The seventh placed solo racer is expected at Les Sables d'Olonne on Wednesday.