News Around the World
After a long gap designers Jean-Marie Finot and Pascal Conq are back in the Mini 6.50 game with this foiling scow for merchant navy officer Maxime Sallé who is building the boat himself in Brittany. As they patiently awaited an invitation back into a class they once dominated, Finot-Conq invested thousands of hours of CFD time tracking the move to scow shapes and then to foiling. This winter’s Mini Transat is over-subscribed by more than 50 per cent and anyone completing a new design faces a tough race to qualify in time
‘You can see this across the whole fleet, as each skipper deals
with their own problems after 60 days of racing, all of us fighting to stay in the game. I am proud to be one of this number. I am proud to be a solo sailor competing in the Vendée Globe.’ Later on Pip had a chat with Bernard Stamm, builder of Medallia (ex-Superbigou), and he told her: ‘Pip, you are my hero.’
Back in ‘normal’ conditions Maxime Sorel has been doing a hell of a good job onboard his 13-year-old VPLP/Verdier V&B Mayenne. Slowed by light winds in the middle of the South Atlantic, he was carefully preparing for the final sprint: ‘According to the latest grib files, even though I don’t trust them as far out as three days, the area in front of me looks a little clearer than what the others had. ‘We will still be wary. In any case, I took my time to repair my
sails yesterday. I lowered the main and repaired the leech. Then I took down the J3 that I had damaged at Cape Horn… ‘We’re going to set off on the trade winds highway, it’s going to
be pure speed, almost straight to the Canaries. So it’s definitely better to have your boat 100 per cent. I think that we, the boats with straight daggerboards, are not going to go fast in these conditions, much slower than the foilers. ‘Yesterday I was a little upset when the nice wind filled in, but
pretty soon I thought that even if I had managed to glue the sail back together in time, the foilers would be long gone. So I took the time to make good repairs, to begin with the J3 on the sundeck! It must be the first time since the start of the Vendée Globe that I could do things on the deck without being wet. I also take the opportunity to have a shower every day. You can do that in the South Seas!’
The crazy keel of MACSF ‘A few days ago Isabelle [Joschke] had a problem with her hydraulic keel ram; when there is a problem with this ram there is a failsafe to lock the keel which is commonly called a dummy ram. This allows the keel to be centred securely so the boat can continue to sail. It was this system that Isabelle had in place for a few days and which broke last night,’ explained Alain Gautier, team manager of the MACSF project, on 10 January. Forced to abandon the race while she was up there with the
frontrunners, the female skipper now immediately had to escape to the north of a strong low generating a violent sea, making progress very dangerous with a free-swinging keel. ‘The goal is to survive these next 24 hours because they will be long. ‘There are 35-40kt of wind with 5-6m seas expected for the entire
day – it will be tense. We must therefore wait until tomorrow evening to even decide a strategy [for Isabelle] to reach a safe port,’ adds the winner of the second Vendée Globe in 1992/93. Jean-Pierre Dick, who finished fourth – without a keel – in the 2012 edition declared: ‘It was in the end less tricky in my case.
26 SEAHORSE
I had lost the entire keel, I had to navigate differently. It was complicated, but for Isabelle it’s almost more dangerous.’ The priority for Isabelle is to sail flat on the water and to avoid
the boat heeling. Alain Gautier told us: ‘It is impossible to immobilise the keel properly with ropes. Our goal is to reach a Brazilian harbour. Isabelle has to be patient because it is going to take a long time.’ MACSF was the seventh retirement of a fleet counting 33 boats
at the start. A low number considering the average of retirements in the VG which is about half of the fleet.
The biggest gust of wind I have ever had Yannick Bestaven was first to round his first Cape of Deliverance: ‘Yes, it was a huge deliverance… It was probably the biggest gust of wind I’ve ever had in a boat. I had never had so much wind and such big waves; I must have had regular gusts at 60kt, or even a little more, and 8-10m of waves breaking… ‘It was kind of epic. I had decided not to reduce sail too much
because otherwise the autopilot could not steer. I stayed with three reefs in the mainsail and the J3 to keep speed. The problem was that at the top of the waves you were at 10kt and in the surfing you were going at 33kt with nosedive crashes at the finish, but at least I was going about straight… ‘It was impressive and beautiful at the same time, even though
I did not see Cape Horn. I was happy to round the rock because I knew that in a few hours it would end and that I would return to normal conditions. And it was still a sailor’s dream for me to round this famous Cape Horn, even if there is necessarily a little disap- pointment not to have seen it. But I know that I passed it – it is marked in the books now!’ Despite a strong lead sailing up the Atlantic, Yannick was
drastically slowed approaching the latitude of Rio de Janeiro and soon slipped to fifth. He had lost his previous 450nm lead… but still the six leading boats were separated by only 90nm after 66 days at sea! Patrice Carpentier
NEW ZEALAND Emirates Team New Zealand’s big red Melvin Morelli-designed RIB packs four 300hp outboard motors and boasts a top speed of 58kt. Propelled by breeze alone, the team’s AC75 foiling monohull seems at a massive disadvantage. Yet it has hit over 50kt, so the notion of pitting the two against each other in training for the America’s Cup defence is not quite the unequal contest one might imagine. Following the four-day America’s Cup World Series and Christmas
Cup regattas in Auckland, the defender is bereft of further real competition until the Cup Match itself in March. Meanwhile, the three challengers are clashing swords for two months of intense battle in the Prada Cup series to determine who carries the fight to the New Zealand hosts.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120
