Update
Having paid his dues, both in those dreadful performances in the World Series and at least as painfully in the press conferences that followed them, Ben Ainslie flashes a gesture that his Olympic Finn rivals remember well: ‘still a long way to go but all good so far.’ Without over-egging the parallel, Ainslie is also remembered in the class for starting regattas he won with a couple of bad ones… A post-rescue Dean Barker (inset) and sadly an old Elton John line comes to mind… [the America’s Cup] has seen that face before
perform very well later on, as the boats with straight daggerboards are going fast and with a good VMG running in windy conditions. Italian Giancarlo Pedote was on the trail of the leaders on his foiler,
Prysmian. The other two old non-foilers behind, Yes We Cam! and Omia Water Family, certainly suffered a bit from the supremacy of the foilers on the ‘Highway South’ but if they stay in the loop there may be new surprises if the weather gets complex in these final days. The certainty is that the end will happen very, very quickly once
the boats are in the west winds with hopefully no breakages. We could have nine crossing the finish line on the same day. Once again this is unheard of in the history of the Vendée Globe, with the icing on the cake that three boats will benefit from a reduction in time for helping to rescue Kevin Escoffier. Given the compactness of the peloton at the head of the fleet,
it is quite possible that the winner of the ninth edition of the VG will not be the first boat to cross the finish line… Behind this extraordinarily dense pack of nine Imocas, after 73
days at sea the 10th boat, Maxime Sorel’s V&B Mayenne, was only about 200nm further back but was in danger because in its wake the black foiler weapon of Armel Tripon (L’Occitane en Provence) was catching up at full speed. The latest Sam Manuard design – his first Imoca and first ever Imoca scow – was considerably delayed due to the breakage of a halyard lock. Since then she has been constantly catching up and overtaking boats, less quickly than her skipper would have liked because the lack of a J3 (impossible to use) was detrimental to him in the Southern Seas, but enough to now threaten Maxime Sorel. The performance of the Scow has not gone unnoticed to the point that its manufacturer has already put a new model into production.
RINGMEISTER – Denis Horeau These days Denis Horeau organises international conferences on clean technologies, works on podcasts exploring famous round- the-world journeys, and immerses himself in catalysing sustainable development. Before this he has been race director of four editions of the Vendée Globe (including the inaugural one), nine Solitaires du Figaro and a Barcelona World Race, and he was at the helm of
18 SEAHORSE
The Race when our paths first crossed some 20 years ago. He just published Mon Vendée Globe, a detailed backstage personal commentary on this unique and peculiar event. ‘I recommend that you drop in and out of the book at random,’
said Denis when I called to thank him for sending me his prose. ‘As it’s structured around alphabetical entries there are crossovers and if you read it from beginning to end that may lead to repetitions.’ I disregarded his advice, fired up the log burner at the end of
a particularly Zoom-heavy week, and immersed myself in this per- sonal, behind-the-scenes view of the most iconic of all singlehanded races. Mon Vendée Globe is replete with anecdotes, with a notable focus on revealing the nicer side of people, and occasionally giving the reader access to the amusingly mundane scenes that have punctuated the event’s existence… like the sinking of the pontoon during Lamazou’s victory celebrations in the first edition. ‘Nobody had expected such a tidal wave of a crowd,’ he writes.
Politicians, celebrities and business leaders suddenly felt their shoes filling with cold winter water as the pontoon sank below the surface. ‘The incident was not greatly appreciated, but made a banal, frail pontoon one of the key emblems of the event, visited by hundreds of thousands of afficionados between editions!’ Denis gives credit to everyone who played a role in making the
Vendée Globe what it is: just as Loïck Peyron gets praise for refusing to use a land-based router in the first edition (even though it was authorised), the totally unknown Philippe Fusco and his wife Maryse get a whole page for their role as faithful and devoted volunteers. These examples might sit at opposite extremes, but reading between the lines one quickly understands that for Horeau finding and outlining the quintessence of the race is the key – therefore all aspects must be examined, not only the glorious and the glittery. It quickly transpires that the author also wishes to tackle some
preconceived ideas, especially when he feels that some characters deserve more credit than they get. It is the case for Kito de Pavant, whose talent and efforts are detailed, as well as for Michel Desjoyeaux, who in Horeau’s view is often unjustly seen as some- what cold and clinical. To rebalance the books the author underlines Michel’s mentoring of Rich Wilson, a discreet, non-transactional yet very committed effort. (He would write him very lengthy emails,
STUDIO BORLENGHI/ALEA INSET CHRIS CAMERON/ALEA
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