For the duration of the Vendée Globe, Tip & Shaft will be decoding the weather and the trajectories of the 40 solo sailors, with Loïs Berrehar and Gaston Morvan, 2nd and 3rd respectively in the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec 2024, taking turns every other Friday. Loïs Berrehar is at the helm this Friday.
“Another busy week in the Vendée Globe! One of the main news is the return of Yoann Richomme to the lead over the Charlie Dalin/Sébastien Simon duo, after he had fallen as far as 400 miles behind. He attacked hard to keep in touch, and it’s quite impressive to see the fine average speeds he’s managed to maintain.
He first came back to Seb, in large part when they found themselves on port tack, where Seb is handicapped since he no longer has a starboard foil, and then to Charlie, who revealed this week that he’d had a problem with a sail, without saying much more. He just said that he had repaired it in fairly strong conditions, which means that he was deprived of it at the time, and we saw that it took him a little longer than Yoann to get the sail back in place.
It’s also worth pointing out that Paprec Arkéa is particularly at ease downwind VMG, and Yoann is very strong in these conditions. Even though he had a little more wind behind him at one point, he put in an impressive performance, which was great to see, a fine demonstration of control and attack, especially as he came very close to being caught by the high pressure, like Thomas (Ruyant) behind him, who has lost thousands of miles this week.
Up front, we’re now witnessing a great battle of the leaders between Charlie and Yoann, with each taking it in turns to take the lead. I think it’s a question of the architectural choices of their respective boats, but also of the sail configuration, which isn’t quite the same. When reaching and in lighter winds, Macif seems more efficient, and as soon as the VMG starts in strong winds, Paprec Arkéa makes the difference, in 4×4 mode.
Over the next few days, they’ll be making fast progress towards the Horn, because there are several lows forming a large corridor of wind which they’ll benefit from, as will their pursuers, from Thomas Ruyant to Justine Mettraux. On my routings (see below), I see Charlie and Yoann rounding Cape Horn on the night of December 23 to 24, around midnight in France, with a lead of around 1,000 miles over Thomas, who would round two days later, on the night of 25 to 26; as for Justine, at the end of this chasing group, she should tip over into the South Atlantic early on the 27th, just under a day and a half behind Thomas.
Now, we can’t yet say that the end of the race will come down to a Charlie/Yoann duel. Firstly, because Seb, although handicapped by his missing foil, hasn’t said his last word. I think he’s really impressive, he never gives up. This was the case in 2016 for Armel (Le Cléac’h), who had a lead of almost 1,000 miles over Alex Thomson and lost a good part of it on the way back up the Atlantic, when the latter was missing a foil.
Today, this is even more the case when you see the boats’ ability to accelerate, as Yoann’s rapid ascent proved. And what’s certain is that things will settle down almost mechanically after the Horn, between the leading boats, which will no doubt slow down once they’ve rounded the cape, and the group led by Vulnerable, which will arrive fairly quickly, driven by a fairly strong phenomenon.
Another highlight of the past week was Boris Herrmann’s return to the front. Last week, he was in a small group with Justine, Sam (Davies) and Clarisse (Crémer), he managed to get away from them, he even managed to overtake Sam Goodchild and Paul Meilhat and is now chasing Yannick Bestaven. I often hear it said that Boris is like a diesel, starting slow then accelerating, and maybe it’s true.
In any case, with Justine, he knew how to be opportunistic, he managed to get into the gap and hook onto the train of the group in front, unlike Clarisse and Sam who were at the limit and were caught by the high pressure, perhaps partly due to technical problems – we’ve seen that this was the case for Clarisse. As a result, they lost 1,000 miles in a week to Boris, who put in a fine display of speed. He has a very efficient boat in strong VMG downwind conditions, which should last until the end of the Pacific, and he should be in the match at the Horn.
Behind them, we can see that the fleet has suffered a lot this week, with some impressive videos from the Southern Ocean and some clearly tired faces. I’m obviously sad for Pip Hare, who had to give up after dismasting, even though she was having a great race and was right up there with the Imoca boats of her generation.
We realize that the slower boats are more affected by the difficult conditions than those ahead, who have almost always managed to stay ahead of the phenomena by putting on the gas. You can be more in control of your destiny with these fast foilers. Charlie and Seb’s southern passage through the first Indian low would probably not have been possible with slower boats. The frontrunners therefore had to deal with slightly less violent sea and wind conditions than some of those behind them, but this meant they had to keep up a frantic pace, which in turn demanded a lot of commitment and generated a fair amount of stress. Since the TGV from St. Helena, they haven’t had much respite. They’re being mistreated, but in a different way!
For the group around Jean Le Cam, the start of the Pacific, which they have just entered, is shaping up to be quite complicated from a weather point of view, with a big high pressure zone in front of them that they’ll have to get around before recovering any wind (see image above). Life on board is going to be cooler, but they’re going to have to tack well to get out of this zone without much wind. The three foilers of Giancarlo Pedote, Isabelle Joschke and Alan Roura have managed to open up a small gap on the two daggerboard boats of Jean Le Cam and Benjamin Ferré, and I think they’ll continue to pull away, because they’re gaining confidence in themselves and in their machine, which means they can accelerate a little more than they did at the start of the race. Now, with the big bubble across the track, the cards may be reshuffled. That’ll keep us busy until Christmas!
Photo: Eloi Stichelbaut / polaRYSE
