News Around the World
Yves Le Blévec set off from La Trinité in November on his Ultim Actual, the older Irens-Cabaret designed Sodebo of Thomas Coville, in an attempt to set a new record mark for rounding the world singlehanded westabout against the prevailing winds and currents. The record is held by Vendée Globe veteran Jean-Luc Van Den Heede with a time of 112 days set in 2004 on his aluminium monohull Adrien. Van Den Heede himself is now preparing for next year’s Golden Globe. Actual is much slimmer than new Ultims, 16.5m beam against 22-23m on today’s boats, which adds to the challenge (and the stress) – especially upwind in heavy seas. But Le Blévec has pace in hand against Adrien if his boat stays reliable – if he pulls it off it will be the first time this record has been held by a multihull
FRANCE TJV or TGV? So many boats racing through the North Atlantic Ocean: Mini Transat, Transat Jacques Vabre, VOR plus the solo round-the-world record attempts of Macif and Actual. In France media speak especially about the TJV which left Le Havre on Sunday 5 November. On a sporting level the race is very interesting because there is
strong competition in all four classes. In the Ultims the regatta was, in short, a match race between the well-proven Sodebo and the very new foiler Edmond de Rothschild. At the start in the Channel the brand new blue and white 100-footer sailed by Josse and Rouxel accelerated away from her rival thanks to her foils –but the difference was less obvious during the descent of the north Atlantic. The two boats crossed the Doldrums neck and neck like ‘letters
at the post office’ (the speed of Sodebo never went under 13kt) and reached the Recife latitude in Brazil after only one week of navigation. In the end Thomas Coville and Jean-Luc Nélias on Sodebo crossed the finish line in Salvador de Bahia 7d 22h 7m 27s after leaving Le Havre. The 30m-long Sodebo Ultim sailed 4,742nm at an average speed of 24.94kt and smashed the previous record of 10d 38m 43s set by Franck Cammas and Steve Ravussin on the Orma 60 Groupama 2 in 2007 (the last time the race finished in Salvador) by more than two days. Her 32m rival arrived 1h 47m behind. Gitana sailed 4,838nm
at an average of 25.21kt. The obvious question was why the new boat that looked much faster than Sodebo at the start of the race went slower later on the Atlantic highway. Skipper Sébastien Josse talked about this in Salvador. Several technical issues had arisen on the brand new Verdier design, especially concerning the foils. ‘On day two, after the front rolled through, we suffered serious
damage to our port foil. As it was now unusable we retracted the very expensive appendage to avoid any further damage. Two days later it was the turn of the starboard foil, which showed the same signs of damage as its twin.’ In essence Séb and Thomas were
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deprived of its major performance potential for most of the race. ‘It’s a great win. We’ve built a great story with Jean-Luc and
Sodebo, we can both break records and win races,’ Coville said. Coville and Nélias lost a hard-fought 2015 Transat Jacques Vabre to François Gabart and Pascal Bidégorry, sailing the brand new Macif, by under eight hours. (Gabart sent a nice message to his friends from deep in the south Atlantic where he was several days into his attempt to break Coville’s solo round-the-world record.) Sodebo had looked like playing the role of plucky underdog,
hanging in there, but they held the lead after taking it in the early hours of day 4. However, the story did not end there… Jean-Luc Nélias said: ‘We have the impression that they (Edmond de Roth- schild) rolled away their gennaker off the Canaries. They luffed for a few hours and virtually stopped and after that they haven’t shown the speed we expected, but even with this technical problem they were later going the same speed as us!’ Thomas and Jean-Luc know their Sodebo very well and pushed
her to her limits. They wanted to be aggressive and that is just what they were.
So fast in the four classes Despite a front crossing the fleet the day after the start which obliged most of the boats to head west for a time, the whole TJV fleet (37 boats) went very fast thanks to favourable strong winds. Best daily runs were about 650 miles for the Ultims and around 500 for the Multi50s, closely followed by the best Imoca. Even the Class40 frontrunners were playing at 350-375nm daily runs… Of course sailing fast when the sea is sharp and fierce squalls
are blowing makes navigation very difficult and very uncomfortable. Sometimes dangerous, especially on a multihull. Samantha Davies, co-skipper of the Imoca Initiatives Coeur: ‘My thoughts are with the Multi50 guys and hats off to all of them because these conditions are really tough – it’s hard enough for us (in an Imoca 60) and we’ve got a keel underneath that keeps us the right way up.
THIERRY MARTINEZ
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