the night from his liferaft by ‘King’ Jean. Three days later Kevin was transferred to the frigate Nivôse about 360nm north of the Crozet Islands and Jean could continue the race alone. PRB was known to be the lightest Imoca ever. She was since equipped with foils, but she was also reinforced before the race.
The race is slow When Hugo Boss led across the Equator she was a day behind the path of Alex Thomson’s previous boat leading the race four years ago. When race leader Apivia passed Good Hope she was five days later than the still-leading Hugo Boss in 2016. And when race leader Apivia passed Cape Leeuwin at midnight on day 34 the gap between the leaders from the previous VG to the present one was nearly a week. Huge! There was much excitement about the speed of the new boats
this time, Alex even talking about a lap in under 70 days, maybe 65! But even before the first half of the 2020 race is finished we know for sure that the 2017 record of 74 days will not be beaten. In the same period of racing in 2016 race-winner Banque
Populaire VIII, skippered by Armel Le Cléac’h, had already passed New Zealand… The reason for that is of course the weather: rough and upwind for the first half of the North Atlantic section, calm for the second part of the South Atlantic crossing and then quite strong with rough seas in the Indian Ocean. Going upwind, or sailing in light/moderate VMG conditions, or
battling in stormy conditions, the foilers have no advantage rather a disadvantage. The fastest run so far in 24 hours belongs to Thomas Ruyant (LinkedOut) with 512 nm. In 2013 François Gabart clocked 534nm and in the last VG Hugo Boss reached 536.81nm a few days before the finishing line. Let us wait for the second half of the race to see if a foiler can
do better, and even approach a 600nm run, as Alex Thomson declared in an interview before the start of the VG. The main difference between this VG and the previous one is the
large concentration of frontrunners. The competition looks very open and once in the Roaring Forties the first 11 boats went at the same average speed for a long time. But the furious Indian Ocean did first gather up the Imocas then divide them again – probably because the contenders prioritised the protection of their boats (especially the foilers which are much exposed with their long wings). Approaching Australia the gap between Apivia and V B Mayenne
(11th) was roughly 600nm: nothing ‘big’ on the scale of a round- the-world race. We never saw such competition in the VG… Four years ago the race was dominated by the match racing between BP VIII and Hugo Boss from South Africa till the finish in Les Sables. The foilers have not yet dominated the race. The performances displayed earlier by the new generation suggested that they would quickly take a substantial lead on the other boats and that the race would be a battle between the best skippers of these new boats. On day 35 we observed that the reality has been quite different
– to the extent that Jean Le Cam, author of a remarkable demon- stration onboard his old Farr design (the ex-Foncia that won the VG in 2009 helmed by Desjoyeaux and which has been constantly upgraded by Le Cam), declared in the middle of the Indian Ocean that ‘Foilers were not made for the Vendée Globe’. If we run the race movie again from the beginning we note that
the non-foilers chose a different route from the foilers in the Bay of Biscay by sailing close to Finisterre, then stayed with the foilers by heading further south down the Atlantic, first in demanding conditions and then in more erratic winds. But it was still Hugo Boss who was at the head of the fleet when crossing the tropical depression Theta, staying close to the centre in fierce winds and chaotic seas. Then Yes We Cam!, close behind, took the lead and kept it until the end of the first week of the race. It took a long time and many miles for first Thomas Ruyant and
then Charlie Dalin to overtake ‘King Jean’ and join the leading trio in the wake of the ‘Boss’. In the south other foilers also caught up with Le Cam, but the dean of the Vendée Globe race skilfully pulled his way around the St Helena High by following a shorter, more eastern course. He was rewarded for his stubbornness and on day 20 was less than a day behind the new leader, Apivia. Behind them the leading peloton was tightly grouped. Soon
afterwards, in the Indian Ocean, it was quickly discovered that the foilers had to slow down a lot in the bad weather to protect their boats. Even so we had soon lost three of the race favourites. As a result, just behind the two Verdier designs, Apiviaand Linked-
Out (plus Maitre Coq IV), approaching the longitude of Cap Leeuwin less than 100nm separated a very compact group of five boats. Among them were no fewer than three old non-foilers: Omia Water Family of the young and excellent Benjamin Dutreux, who comes from the Figaro circuit; the boat of Jean Le Cam, to which a bonus will be granted following the rescue of Kevin Escoffier (as well as for the three other skippers who diverted); and the boat of Damien Seguin, this Paralympic champion who has only one hand to manage his 60-footer, prepared with the co-operation of… Le Cam. The three boats, two Farr and a Finot-Conq design, date from 2007… The other three sailing with the frontrunners are foilers of the
past generation which have their original appendages (easier to manage in stormy conditions than the long tails), except Boris Her- mann’s Malizia which has new longer foils. Three of the eight new foilers to start the Vendée Globe have retired and the remaining three are far behind. Charal, who finally left Les Sables d’Olonne nine days after the start, overtook her first rival only on 11 December
Gotta look good for the Southern Ocean… 4myPlanet skipper Alexia Barrier passes the longitude of Good Hope. The hugely experienced Barrier is racing one of the oldest boats in the race, the Marc Lombard-designed Whirlpool which was launched in 1998 and raced in the 2000 Vendée Globe by Catherine Chabaud. The boat has already completed seven round-the-world races and this will be its fifth Vendée Globe… Since acquiring her in 2018 – then named Le Pingouin – Barrier has completed every Imoca Globe Series event and accumulated the most sea miles of any entrant in a determined effort to maintain her finish record
in the southeast Atlantic and in so doing joined the trailing pack. The story of the third new foiler, L’Occitane, is interesting. The
Manuard design was delayed soon after the start due to a technical problem and was considerably slowed down in the North Atlantic like the other boats at the back of the fleet. Her skipper, Armel Tripon, crossed the Equator in 17th position, 5d 14h days behind the leader, Hugo Boss, 7h 45m in front of Apivia in second. Which means Armel was roughly 5d 7h behind Apivia. At the Cape of Good Hope, 4,000nm further on, L’Occitane was
5d 17h behind the leader Apivia, and in so doing she recorded the second fastest performance crossing the South Atlantic between the Equator and Good Hope. For several days Armel’s big scow averaged 18-20kt in ideal
moderate conditions for a foiler. Tripon has for many days been the happiest VG competitor on his black foiler, sailing very fast alongside the ice zone. Passing north of the Kerguelen Islands early on day 34, the blasting L’Occitanewas approximately 1,600 miles behind Apivia, a shorter distance from the leader than he was four weeks earlier… If she continues at this rate the new scow weapon could be the dark horse so far. Foilers still have a chance of showing their alleged supremacy as soon as the sea is OK for ‘flying’. Jérémie Beyou catches up with the slowest boats passing the Cape of Good Hope: ‘My way of life is to sail day after day, to concentrate on the things that will happen during the day. If you start zooming out the map and looking ahead it’s not very good for morale, so
SEAHORSE 21
ALEXIA BARRIER
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