News Around the World
FRANCE TRANSAT JACQUES VABRE: A FIERCE BATTLE IN CLASS40 In the end Maxime Sorel and Antoine Carpentier, sailing V&B, took the Class40 prize in the 13th edition of the Transat Jacques Vabre, covering the theoretical course of 4,350nm at an average of 10.40kt but actually sailing 4,513nm at an average of 10.77kt. About the same speed as the old Imoca 60s! In one of the closest finishes in the race, Aïna Enfance (Chappellier/Le Vaillant) finished second, just 17m 42s behind. Sorel and Carpentier only moved into the lead in the final hours
of the race, taking the lead with slightly better VMG in a nice gybing fight along the Brazilian coast. Aymeric Chappellier (sailing the latest Manuard-designed Mach 40) said everything was nicely in control until those last few miles to the finish... ‘Arthur [Le Vaillant] was sleeping and I was trimming the sails
when I hear a big bang. The spinnaker halyard broke and the kite fell in the water. We managed to bring it back onboard without any big damage but it took a long time. ‘For a while we sailed with the small spinnaker which forced us
to sail higher and in the dark we lost contact with V&B. Then as the sun came up we realised that she was now going a little faster than us; we checked if there was something on the keel with the endoscope but we saw nothing. Finally we dived and saw 4m of net dragging behind the bulb… In all this we lost concentration and V&B took the lead. ‘The race has been intense. Our rivals pushed their boats so
hard in the strong winds and we did not think that it was possible to sustain such a pace. But the boat was very strong so in the end it was OK. She is very well built, formidable. Thanks to Nicolas
18 SEAHORSE
Groleau at JPS, the builder, and Sam Manuard, the designer. But we have still to learn how to set and drive our boat. V&B is a near-sistership but she looks a bit better in strong conditions.’ But on V&B the race had also not been a gentle cruise. Maxime
remembers: ‘Rounding the Brittany coast we broke a bulkhead! We called Sam [Manuard] who advised us how to fix it. We thought that if we wanted it to hold we had to stop while we did the work. We waited three hours watching our competition sailing away. It was hard. Sylvie Viant [race director] advised us just to sit down and have a coffee! ‘When we got going we now had 50nm to recover. Actually, in
the end that may have helped us because we didn’t push the boat to the limit to preserve our damaged bulkhead.’ Antoine Carpentier recalls: ‘Yes, we had to be cautious because
the sea was bad and several boats were damaged on that part of the course. We came back gradually – then on one day we broke the 24-hour record by sailing 377nm! That day we also ruined the medium spinnaker and so we could have been even faster… I must admit that it was a bit scary at that point. ‘Twice our rudders were completely out of the water and we lost
control of the boat which is not recommended in those conditions. I was not proud – we had one reef in the main and a 160m2 kite up in nearly 40kt of wind… ‘It is clear that these new-generation boats go much faster
reaching. We felt for Phil and Pablo [on Imerys Clean Energy] because they couldn’t do anything. We spent a day overtaking them in the trade winds but as we finally passed we saw that we were perhaps 1.5kt faster. We didn’t dare to get them on the VHF for fear that it would be badly received.
RJ BAKER
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