After being dismasted yesterday afternoon Sam Goodchild is doing OK, under the circumstances, and has secured his IMOCA. Leader Charlie Dalin continues to make good progress towards Les Sables d’Olonne where he is expected Saturday night or very early Sunday morning. Boris Herrman is charging and making places, confident of completing his second consecutive Transat second place. The leaders of the southern group of top foilers are hanging in there in tough conditions. And the second group give the appearance of a re-start spread north to south over more than 300 miles.
For Goodchild it is a bitter blow for the skipper who won the IMOCA Globe Series last year and whose preparations for his first Vendée Globe were going so well. He had spoken most recently of his primary desire to get through the dynamic little low pressure system and he had been going well. Now he has to take things step by step, stay cool and try to deal with the feelings of disappointment, knowing from past experience that he will come back stronger.
“Sam is doing well and the boat is safe,” reports Greg Boyer Gibaud from Race Direction, “He is continuing to prepare a jury rig and tries to rest.”
In the lead Charlie Dalin (MACIF Santé Prévoyance) has seen his margin very slightly trimmed to under the 300 miles with just over 600 miles to the finish line. He is upwind in a moderate NE’ly wind. To the north Boris Herrmann (Malizia Seaexplorer) is well into his downwind Super G, his estimate being that he should finish second, about a day ahead of the second group.
“It felt great yesterday to finally get the acceleration on flat water. It was really very nice to sail up there.” He reported late last night, “ I am optimistic for second place. My Adrena routings have me comfortably ahead of the group so I am quite confident, and that feels good. I am quite isolated, though, and it is so much nicer to have boats around. It was a bit difficult for me in the beginning when I had to assume my choice and the models were very uncertain. But I accepted the situation I am here doing my thing. I am all good. I have the options to gybe and that will be the game for me to the finish, gybing several times – three times or likely five times or more, and sail changes. Even if they have been faster I think I have a day in hand.”
Herrmann is up to sixth this morning and making averages of over 20 knots, usually around 22 knots in conditions which are, and will continue to be good for Malizia Seaexplorer.
But the southern route is tough and will be at its worst off the acceleration zone at Cape Finisterre. From his vantage point in the northern group Romain Attanasio (Fortinet) observes “There are strong winds, they will have to hold on and tack off especially as Cape Finisterre looks painful. It's really going to be hard!”
“They are in a northeast flow which will build,” says the Assistant Race Director, “The area is pretty hard. They could have 25 to 30 knots of wind during the day.”
In ninth this morning, just behind Sam Davies and Justine Mettraux, Pip Hare messages, “It is good but I made a silly mistake in the night and have fallen behind Sam which I am gutted about. I had a good day yesterday kind of holding pace with Sam and Justine who are really good and then just we came into the top of the depression last night, the wind eased, I shook all the reefs out, just trucking east waiting for the shift and then I had a little sleep which was so not the right thing to do. I missed the shift and now I have gone from three miles ahead to 11 miles behind Sam. That is a pretty stupid mistake to make. I am upset at myself. But we still have about 1000 miles still to go and so I need to try not to make any more mistakes, just dig deep and work on boatspeed. The breeze is building again I have 25kts right now and just about making a due north heading. Winds are so variable by about 40 degrees. I have been chatting with Sam Goodchild talking about how he has put his jury rig up and wondering what I might do in that circumstance.”
LIKE A FRESH START
Meanwhile more than half the fleet, 16 skippers are lined up north to south, trying to position themselves in relation to the anticyclone to their north.
“Visually, it looks like they’re going to make a new start,” says the member of the Race Direction team. “This part of the fleet extends over 350 miles in longitude and their challenge is not to be eaten up by the anticyclone". Those to the south have more wind and are quicker.
Romain Attanasio (Fortinet) has recently been part of this group: “I has been so uncertain that I wanted to just take the shortest route. This is what Jean-Yves Bernot teaches us when we don’t know what to do. I’m going to sail upwind to the anticyclone, turn into it and then head for Les Sables d’Olonne. The routings give me an arrival within 5 days.”
In the north is Japan’s Kojiro Shiraishi (DMG Mori Global One) who is happy to have “chosen an in-between option, the least risky”. He is prepping to compete in his 3rd Vendée Globe and has aready completed the Around Alone race round the world and so he has quite a bit of experience in IMOCA He muses this morning, “There has never been a race with so many different choices”. But the actual duration of the transatlantic race does not surprise him. “In 2016 during the first edition, it took me 12 days. I had mentally prepared myself for it to be longer than during the outbound transatlantic race. But I am starting to feel my age (57 years) on board this demanding boat but I am not going to rush, to push too hard, just aiming to arrive at Les Sables d’Olonne as soon as possible without breaking anything”.