Details
Had Alex Thomson not motored those extra four miles after freeing himself from the rocks of Guadeloupe he might still have won the Route du Rhum. Fred Augendre explains
If since its origins the Route du Rhum has written some exceptional pages in the history of ocean racing, this 11th edition will be able to figure prominently. It will certainly be remembered for two of the most improbable reversals of fortune. The battle at the head of the Ultims had
witnessed the opening ‘act’ of this strange play when on his 12-year-old Idec Francis Joyon, 62 years old, stole the honours when in the final yards he blew past the young François Gabart, 35 years old, the race’s ultra-favourite on Macif. Four days later Alex Thomson fell asleep when he had won the race in the Imoca category and his monohull finished its journey on a cliff at the northern tip of Guadeloupe. Forced to start the engine to get his
Hugo Boss off the rocks, the British skipper was handed a 24-hour penalty, relegating him to third and leaving the victory to Frenchman Paul Meilhat. Some will con- sider Thomson should simply have been disqualified; others, on the other hand, including many French sailors, considered he should have been crowned the winner of an event he had dominated, going so far as to describe the referees’ position as ‘shameful’. So here is a small analysis of an
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unusual event and a jury decision that was not always very well understood.
How did Alex Thomson get stranded? Until the final moments, or what should have been the final moments, Hugo Boss’s trajectory was flawless. Sailing at full speed in the face of the heavy weather of the first few days, apparently with ice in his veins, Alex hung onto the fronts before swinging confidently around the edge of the high pressure and then forcing a hard pace in the trade winds. By now Hugo Boss was sailing away from her pursuers and soon had a safe lead of more than 230nm. Alex’s competition was wonder- ing where this devil of a man and his boat will draw such resources. She was averag- ing 18kt downwind and was two and a half hours from the last gybe to the north of Guadeloupe when the British sailor decided to rest a little, knowing the final miles around the island would be complex. Some soloists equip their boats with
sirens that will wake a dead man. Alex goes further. When he put his head down for one last time, as well as setting an audible alarm – ‘a very very loud klaxon with a red flashing light inside the boat’ – that would sound repeatedly for 20 minutes, if that did not wake the exhausted sailor then he was also wearing an electric bracelet to shock him after a further five minutes had passed. Twice since leaving Saint Malo it was
the bracelet that woke him up. But this time, nothing: ‘I slept for two and a half hours rather than the hour I had planned. I don’t think my bracelet was charged…’ It was actually the abnormal movement
of the boat that woke its skipper: ‘The alarm was going off, I went up on deck and soon realised I was grounded on
rocks. It was a very shocking experience. ‘Actually, I could not really understand
what was happening… until I went to the chart. Then I saw that it was Guadeloupe.’
How could the boat withstand such a shock? In reality, Hugo Boss would have lost a lot of speed in the minutes before the ground- ing as she sailed under the lee of the high cliffs. ‘When I touched the rocks I did so at 3.8kt. Not long before that I had been sailing at 18kt…’ Still the keel was badly scraped, the starboard foil was damaged, the bow crash box crushed beneath the waterline and there were dents and delam- inations on the hull. But no water ingress. Alex lowered his sails, started his engine
to free himself from the rocks and covered those four miles towards the finish before re-hoisting the sails for the last few miles. It is 0300 UTC, the crash occurred 65
minutes earlier. He stops the motor and places a new seal on the propeller shaft, the race director is notified who in turn alerts the jury president. The jury immedi- ately files a protest against the competitor.
How will the procedure work? The Route du Rhum has an international jury constituted in accordance with the Racing Rules of Sailing: a jury of at least five people, no more than two from the same international authority and which issues decisions without leave for appeal. It has two French, two British and one
German juror, Wetter Mielke, all interna- tional judges. Jury president Georges Priol is the only one present in Guadeloupe, he will communicate with his colleagues by email during the night. The objective is to make a decision before Thomson crosses the line at Pointe-à-Pitre.
PHOTOS CHRISTOPHE BRESCHI
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