Image: Louis Burton (Bureau Vally 2) photographs his friends Damien Seguin and Boris Herrman whom he has in his sights

Leader 1000 miles south of Adelaide
Last days in the Indian Ocean
Five boats race in sight on each other in regatta mode
Dalin back racing
J2 repairs are top of the Job List

Having been slowed since around 1800hrs UTC yesterday evening to evaluate and then today to make some kind of repair to his port side foil system of APIVIA, Charlie Dalin has dropped to third and lost over 120 miles to his two nearest rivals Thomas Ruyant and Yannick Bestaven. But Dalin, Vendée Globe leader for 23 days up until last night, appears to be back in race mode this afternoon, making over 14kts south eastwards towards the south Pacific Ocean.

His team have so far only shared scant details about the problem, saying only that the damage is not thought to have been caused by a collision with an object.

 

Dalin’s communication said “The port foil remains whole. The damage is to the lower support, where the foil rests as it leaves the boat. Charlie has therefore been focusing on strengthening the foil attachment to make sure the casing remains secure.”

 

Meanwhile Ruyant, who himself has no working port foil on LinkedOut, has taken over the race lead again with a small margin of around 10 miles over Bestaven’s Maître CoQ as the leading group broad reach south eastwards towards the Antarctic Exclusion Zone before gybing to parallel the ice boundary and accelerate into the Pacific Ocean later tomorrow or Thursday.

 

Over three hundred miles behind the leading trio, after 36 days and very nearly half of the 24,410 nautical miles course, five IMOCAs are racing within sight of each other in high pressure conditions more akin to the Mediterranean than 47 degrees south, some 1000 miles south of Adelaide, Australia.

 

Boris Herrmann, the German skipper of SeaExplorer - Yacht Club de Monaco was visited by Louis Burton’s drone, then – predictably – they all started filming each other! There is less than four miles between Jean Le Cam (Yes We Cam!) in fourth Louis Burton (Bureau Vallée 2) in fifth, sixth placed Herrmann, seventh placed Benjamin Dutreux (OMIA-Water Family) and eighth positioned Damien Seguin (Groupe APICIL).

 

Herrmann enthused, “It has been such an amazing day, I really had to jump on my pilot to not crash into Damien, we were kind of converging like magnets pulling the boats one to each other. Of course, we were observing for a long time but I really didn’t want to touch my pilot because my boat was on the perfect set up for going fast. Now, I can see 4 lights around in the total darkness, and this is pretty amazing, 5 boats inside half way around - this has never happened before! I was so close to Damian that I could talk to him boat to boat and look closely inside his cockpit and so on…And then we also chatted on WhatsApp.. it’s really nice - no more loneliness. My dream day! It was warm… part of the day I was working outside without a jacket: I made the stern of the boat my workbench and I was playing with the grinder and the drill and this and that… and gluing the sail back together. A really fun day for a change! With distractions and nice things to do. The boat was going nicely by itself while I was working! Still a bit to overtake them but let’s see how tonight goes. Not sure what happens with Apivia, seems like he has a problem with the foil case… but yeah, the Vendée Globe is always good for surprises! Like Francis Joyon says "Tu n’es jamais à l’abri d’une bonne surprise” = "today was really a nice surprise day": warm and quiet. Gentle in any sense.”  

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Herrmann’s objective for the day, to work through his job list while the benevolent conditions prevailed, was mirrored elsewhere in the fleet, although some jobs were achieved through sheer necessity rather than because of the conditions. Yannick Bestaven was ecstatic to have climbed his mast and patched his J2 headsail leech to make his workhorse sail serviceable again before the Pacific and therefore render his Maître CoQ back to 100% efficiency again.

Bestaven said this morning “It is good for our little group as we never stopped. We're going to get wind as we advance and we we'll get more wind along the ice exclusion zone limit. We're going to continue to build the gap on the group behind; that's the aim. I had seen that the area of light pressure was catching up with us, that's why I used the little gennaker, a bit on the limit, it wasn't comfortable, and I had to be careful. I had to follow so as not to be caught up in the light patch with no wind behind. I did not know about Charlie (Dalin) but I could see he was slowing down. I'm not surprised! They are faster boats; they should have better averages than me. I suspected he had a problem, but I think Thomas (Ruyant) is doing well anyway. My foils aren't very big, but they are strong!”

Further back in 11th place Maxime Sorel’s J2 repair was less than easy on board V and B - Mayenne. He had been working round the clock since yesterday. "I'm burnt out, I've just spent nine hours non-stop repairing my J2 (one of his headsails). I don't have any hands left! I've repaired four metres of it. I started at 10pm GMT and finished at 7.30am. My only breaks were for gybes along the Ice Exclusion Zone. I did this listening to music and with lots of elbow grease! I slept for an hour and will sleep another hour before I take the sail out. It's very stiff, all 100m2 of it. It takes up the whole boat! Once the sail is out, I’ll have to rig it on the cable. Then I'll have to go back up to the mast to attach it. Given the state of the sea, I'll have to do it now because the conditions won't be so good afterwards."

"Right now, it looks like the South Atlantic, it's pretty cool. When I climbed the mast, I couldn't understand the state of the sea: we've been sailing on rough seas for ten days now. As the sea conditions had improved, I had the impression that it was OK. But once I got to the top, it wasn't so good! Now though it's going a lot better, I'm going to take advantage of it. I listened to an evening playlist while tinkering about, I had the Fugees playing, a bit of everything really. I had enough hours to play the playlist several times!" Conclude Maxime.

Isabelle Joschke (MACSF) 
"Mentally, it's going pretty well. I'm settling more and more into my race, I'm feeling better and better. Technically, the last three days have been complicated: I had some problems with my gennaker furling system. I had to do some real acrobatics at the front to hoist and lower the sails. Physically, I get tired quickly when there is a difficult manoeuvre. And I get cold quickly... I need to sleep. I am making the most of the calmer weather to take a long trip around the boat, to check, repair... I'm not bored.

One important point to note is that I need to allow more time for myself. Really, from the very beginning of the race I have needed this, but it's impossible. Either I have a cascade of problems or the wind calms down and I throw myself on my ‘To Do’ list of repairs. Or there is a lot of wind, so you have to be on it. I have to find a way to give myself some time. I can't find my Kindle, but anyway, I don't know how I could have found the time to read!

I need to get away from it all and the irony is that I have reduced energy because I have a broken hydro. Which means it’s not possible to distract myself with listening to music or watching videos. And my Kindle, which I normally always have with me, I can’t find anywhere. The other day I did some meditation, which works well for me. It's probably what I should do a little more.

In this race, there are moments when things are on the up, on the competition side of things it’s going well, and then " badaboom ", there's something wrong and you have to fix it. It's hard to gauge. I have been very lucky to be able to get back into the fleet, that’s what really motivates me and that’s why I am in attacking mode. In the race, it speeds up, it stops, it starts again, it stops again! I have to adapt. It's better compared to the beginning of the race. If something breaks on board, I know that in the rankings I will lose some ground, but I also know that I can come back up again, so it affects me a little less. 

Earlier, I aired the boat's forward sail locker, the fresh sea air did a lot of good to the enclosed and wet air inside. The boat is totally enclosed. Since Kevin (Escoffier) sank, I have closed all the hatches. I felt that my boat needed to breathe, a bit like me! You have to keep the heat inside, so it's very confined. So, when I come out, I breathe!” 

Pip Hare (Medallia) message
I am writing this just after dawn on what I think is a typically white, cold dank morning in this part of the Indian Ocean. I am cold, my clothes are all damp, my hair is matted and when I woke up this morning I had the imprint of the foam matting on my face where I had eventually fallen asleep on the floor. -

I am writing this just after dawn on what I think is a typically white, cold dank morning in this part of the Indian Ocean. I am cold, my clothes are all damp, my hair is matted and when I woke up this morning I had the imprint of the foam matting on my face where I had eventually fallen asleep on the floor.

Last night Medallia and I achieved out highest ever top speed - 27 knots - and we put in a 4hr run with an average pace of over 19 knots. Wow! that was incredible.
One of the things I love about being a human being is our ability to continually develop, to push ourselves to new levels, to develop who we are and what we are capable of throughout our lives, to redefine our own definition of 'normal' as we constantly move on to new things.

One of the things I am loving about this race is the incredible opportunity for all of us, regardless of background, budget or boat to make our own competition, to perform within our own parameters and certainly for me to learn and improve as I make my way around the world.

 

Yesterday afternoon and evening I took the possibilities of what Medallia and I are capable of to unknown territory and the schedule between 17h and 21h we averaqed a speed of 19.28 knots. Yes that was our average. It's not often that I speak proudly of my own achievements, I am a strong believer that pride goes before a fall and so I have an aversion to any sort of statement that could be considered boastful. I am still slightly in shock, a bit groggy and feeling like I'm waking up from a massive impromptu party that happened at my place last night.

 

I was pleased yesterday morning when we finally hooked into some breeze - the top of a low pressure system that is rolling underneath us and I have been fairly determined not to let this thing escape. I have been looking after Medallia carefully in the light wind days and was confident that we were both strong and in good shape to push hard. It was a bitter experience watching Didac and Manu sail away from me while I dropped off the back of the last front we rode together and I decided that while I had the energy and the confidence I would push as hard as I could to stay in contact with this breeze even a few more hours in the wind than the last time would make a difference.

 

The sail plan was simple, starting with the jib and main, then as the breeze shifted behind me I could transfer the jib to the outrigger and eventually hoist my code zero. From the look of the forecast the passage of the majority of wind would happen between midday and midnight and I would be on my code zero within twelve hours.

 

I didn't set out like a maniac, just with the desire to push the boat on the set up I had. The wind quickly accelerated to more than forecast, gusting up to 44 knots but Medallia took in her stride. As the breeze built we continued to fly, bow up, autopilot steering a hard but steady course, I tucked in another reef and wondered about changing down the headsail but there seemed to be no need. Everything was under control and every now and again I would put the bow down, sail downwind, flat and slow so i could wander around the deck reassuring myself the stack was tied on, the tack lines were not chafing, the sheets were not rubbing. It was fine and there was no need to back off.

 

I had been averaging 16 knots for the first part of the afternoon, regularly surfing at 20. When the breeze had eventually gone far enough round for me to put the jib onto my outrigger, I put the bow down, went forward and set the pole with a new sheet for the jib then came back and transferred the sail outboard. When all was set I dialled the pilot back up 40 degrees to course and it was like someone had pressed the turbo button. Medallia literally leapt forward on a gust of wind, the speed accelerated through 20 knots, up to 24 and then sat there for over a minute. I was standing in the cockpit, gripping onto the edge of the cuddy and the expression on my face must have been one of total shock and amazement. A tonne of water came over the bow, it didn't take it's normal route down the side deck and into the cockpit, it covered every surface of the coachroof, a huge moving body of water that slammed into me pushing against the back of the cockpit. I adjusted my position to stand behind the coffee grinder, grabbing hold of it with both hands staring at the screens in front of me head down to the on coming waves, watching in amazement as Medallia continued to sit at speeds in excess of 20 knots.

 

Now I would hardly call myself gung-ho and I will happily admit that after my first shock at how fast we were going, my second thought was "you'd better put that jib back where it was... this is too fast". But I wrestled with my caution and gently went through every element of risk, identifying each reason I had for slowing down, mentally ticking off all the possible areas of the boat that could be put under strain by this new level of speed and as logically as possible I reassured myself that this was not outside the capabilities of me and my boat. Though I have been sailing in the IMOCA class for two years my experience of sailing at these sorts of speeds is limited. In my first year with Medallia I was on a shoestring budget, the boat badly needed a refit and I knew that to push hard in big breeze would be a risk to the whole project and so it was out of the question. Between the end of my refit, receiving my new sails and the start of the Vendee Globe race I was lucky enough to get about two weeks of big breeze training days, and for these I will be eternally grateful. We pushed the boat hard at these times and it gave me the baseline confidence I am working from now. But this is different, this weather, this open ocean, my knowledge and strength.

 

So we sailed. I couldn't stay on deck. No one could. But I couldn't settle down below. There was no way I was going to take off my foul weather gear as is normal I wanted to be ready to spring on deck at a moments notice. I sat in the conservatory for a while listening intently to every noise the boat was making. Then I realised I was so cold I was shaking and I hadn't eaten or drunk anything for absolutely hours. I went below and made a meal, all the time watching the numbers, the boat speed the wind speed, the rudder angle and so how hard the pilot was working.

The big breeze and the fast wind angle lasted for a little over six hours and during that time I pushed Medallia harder than I have ever pushed her in the two short years of our acquaintance. The boat is strong and I am so pleased with our sail plan and set up for this race, it's right for the boat and has given it a new lease of life. For me it was another learning experience, a chance to look myself in the face and decide to take the hard option. It was not an easy ride and my mind spent the whole time in a constant feedback loop of addressing concerns and providing reassurance that all of this was well within the capabilities of this skipper and this boat. During the super fast section, despite having droopy eyelids I could not sleep - I tried but my brain flatly refused to turn out the lights. I might not get a chance to push Medallia that hard again, or maybe the chance will arise in the next few days but I sit here now proud that I had the courage to challenge myself and having had a glimpse of what the next level of 'normal' might look like.

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