Above: Jean Le Cam, as is traditional, welcomed every finisher at the end of the Vendée Globe – a tradition that began when he won his first Figaro back in 1994. Here he greets Pip Hare who will no doubt soon become ‘French’ as far as French sailing is concerned. Opposite: four years ago Bureau Vallée purchased the VG winner Banque Populaire even before the finish of the race. Four years later the same company bought L’Occitane immediately after the finish of the VG for skipper Louis Burton. Two more examples of Sam Manuard’s scow are already on order, one of them for L’Occitane skipper Armel Tripon. After turning back for two days with technical issues Tripon instead decided to press on but fell several weather systems behind the leaders. He was also forced to sail the rest of the race with his tiny J4 (seen here) in place of a J3, the most important headsail for this race, destroyed when his halyard lock failed. But Tripon then set the fastest time Equator-to-Equator and the question must now be asked whether a new generation of scows, easier on their skippers and their foils, could overwhelm the current fleet of Imoca ‘skiffs’ just as happened in the Class40?
RAW – Terry Hutchinson It is Monday 15 February, and I am sitting in an Auckland level 3 lockdown. At writing Luna Rossa is up 4-0 against Ineos Team UK in the Prada Cup finals. The lockdown does not have a meaningful impact on sailing today or tomorrow as it is ‘fresh to freighting’ out- side. Neither team would be out training. It will affect Wednesday’s racing as the government has asked for a 24-hour ‘AP’. When asked by our editor at Seahorse to put some thoughts to
paper I must say that the emotions surrounding American Magic’s Challenge for the America’s Cup are all a bit raw, painful and demor- alising. It is exceptionally difficult to sit and watch the others race, and to contemplate what might or might not have been if not for the hole we put in Patriot. Probably best to start there, with the crash that changed so many
aspects of our plan. Many have commented that it was the capsize that turned our
fortunes. The capsize led to the real issue, which was the impact of our hull on the water at pace, and at that angle. The impact created a hole of one-by-one metres in our AC75. With previous capsizes in the Mule and Defiant we recovered
quickly and sailed for hours afterwards. With a hole, not so much! In essence we submerged a boat that is closer to an aeroplane in saltwater for five hours. This was followed by a Herculean effort
14 SEAHORSE
over the next eight-day window to somehow get her sailing again. If there is anything that we knew prior to this experience it was that Patriot was not designed for this type of abuse. So how did this happen? There are lots of opinions floating
around, primarily from people who have never sailed an AC75. Fortunately, I can offer some facts from onboard the yacht. An approaching storm had us a bit nervous during the race when
the incident occurred. As the front approached you could see the breeze completely shutting off south of the racecourse near Rangitoto Light. As we had learnt from struggling in extremely light air the day before during the round-robins, he who has pressure is king in these boats. At the last bottom mark gate Patriot was ahead of Luna Rossa,
and did a right turn in 9kt of true windspeed. Seventy per cent of the way up the last beat Patriotwas sitting on a comfortable 600m lead as the breeze jumped from 13 to 16kt. Onboard we had good discussion about the top right gate being favoured, with an early gybe being needed if we went that way. However, clear communications from flight controller Andrew
Campbell told us that it was really light down the right side of the track, with good pressure left in contrast. If we took that right gate there was a decent chance we would have sailed right into a very significant hole. We had experienced the consequences of that the day before, and were in no rush to do so again.
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