News Around the World �
Role-reversal for Jérémie Beyou, papping the photographer as he crosses the line in Les Sables to win the west-east Transat. Beyou looks quietly confident on the final run in to November’s Vendée Globe start, he has a well-proven boat which finished 2nd last time, carefully updated including foils with a straight main blade which are lighter and simpler to install than their complex curvy cousins
FRANCE Last dance
Jérémie Beyou was the first solo skipper to cross the finishing line in Les Sables d’Olonne of the new solo west-east Transat organised by Imoca. The new event was actually the last long-distance solo exercise before the non-stop singlehanded round-the-world race. There were 14 Imoca 60s at the start in New York, all racing singlehanded (though three boats carried a media man), with several skippers still qualifying for the Vendée. If there were points to remem- ber about this first edition, it should be the collision epidemic soon after the start and the violence of the latest boats in rough weather. The race had a difficult first 24 hours with several leading com- petitors forced to make pitstops in Newport, Rhode Island, following collisions with UFOs (some of which were whales) to the south of the Nantucket Shoals. This affected conventionally equipped older- generation Imoca 60s and the new foil-equipped boat alike. First to redirect to Rhode Island was Queguiner-Leucémie, skipper Yann Eliès having had a collision that caused a rupture in a dagger - board case and also damaged the tip of the foil itself. Soon after- wards Armel Le Cléac’h reported that the new-generation Banque Populaire VIIIhad also hit a floating object with a similar outcome. He too headed back to Newport. Then Morgan Lagravière, skipper of Safran, contacted his shore team reporting that a collision had broken one of his foils and prompted a leak in the foil casing. Then it was the turn of Dutch businessman Pieter Heerema on No Way Back. And finally early race leader Jean-Pierre Dick on St-Michel-Virbac also reported serious damage to his boat’s port foil while she was reaching in 18kt of wind. Dick decided to head for Newport too! All five boats later restarted, except Banque Populaire; with no hope of catching the leaders and a light forecast Armel decided not to continue.
‘Of the five boats in our group four have no foils left on the port side. We are each, therefore, like a bird that’s missing a wing. That will dictate when we can push downwind,’ said Yann Eliès. Later, Vincent Riou on PRBalso complained about damage due to a collision (he stopped in the Azores for repair).
14 SEAHORSE
With five boats out, Alex Thompson on Hugo Bosstook the lead on day two. ‘I think I have now got a quick boat,’ explained Thomson after a windy first night. ‘She’s a bit narrower than the other foilers and a bit lighter and I think it works. Actually, it was rather pleasant sailing… apart from the amount of water coming over the deck.’ On their way towards Europe the leading group soon found them- selves dealing with very strong winds and some of them were a little surprised at the violence of sailing continuously at 20kt or more on their stiff new carbon weapons. ‘In the deepest part of the low,’ explained Sébastien Josse on Edmond de Rothschild, ‘we found very confused 5-6m seas. This was especially hard because the new boats “rebound” dramatically off the waves at speed. ‘Then when the bow starts going under the water she suddenly
slows down driving you forward pretty hard. It is similar the other way when she accelerates. You have to cling on, otherwise you fall over every time… ‘The same goes for sideways motion, left, right… In the end you crawl around on your four “legs” like an animal. Instinct dictates your motion. Life inside is also a bit savage, it’s very hard to eat or sleep. Even drinking is difficult in these conditions.’ ‘Fortunately the low did not last for a whole week, because I don’t know what state we would have come out of it,’ joked Eliès in Les Sables.
Jérémie Beyou added: ‘It was tiring and stressful in those conditions, the boat makes an enormous noise, she hammers a lot and the foil whistles non-stop. We had up to 50kt, not the sort of winds you are looking for. Normally you try to avoid more than 35kt. But it was a good experience and we survived in one piece…’ Beyou, signing off his first Imoca race victory, said he is gaining confidence with his boat, which finished the last Vendée Globe second as Banque Populaireand this winter had a less complex version of the latest-generation foils fitted. ‘I am becoming a little less afraid to press hard, but I am still holding back a bit. However, it is so loud onboard that I have to use noise-cancelling headphones, though I cannot always wear them…’
In the gruelling conditions surfing through the North Atlantic, Alex Thompson (third home behind Sébastien Josse) explained how a
OLIVIER BLANCHET/DPPI
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