Throughout the Vendée Globe, Tip & Shaft will be analysing 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, who will be taking turns every other week. Gaston Morvan is at the helm this Friday for the very last chronicle of this Vendée Globe.
“Since my last column a week ago, we’ve been treated to a salvo of arrivals, from Nico Lunven to Sam Davies. I’ve obviously been marked by those of Benjamin Dutreux and Clarisse Crémer in La Rochelle. I considered the possibility last Friday in view of the conditions forecast off the Vendée coast, and the decision to close the channel was logical, as it wasn’t practicable. Now, I’m putting myself in the sailors’ shoes, it must have been quite special to cross the line and have to go to La Rochelle, even if, on the images I saw, there was a great atmosphere to welcome them.
For Sam (Davies) and Boris (Herrmann), who put themselves on stand-by while waiting for storm Herminia to pass through, the last few days have also been special. They managed to find a small slot to launch themselves into the Bay of Biscay, but it was hot, with swell readings at the start of the week of up to 13 metres! I don’t know if you saw the footage of Sam Goodchild rounding Cape Finisterre in strong winds, but it was pretty impressive. It must have been stressful to find yourself playing in conditions like that, with no possibility of escaping due to the proximity of land. Fortunately, they all passed without damage, but it just goes to show once again that the Bay of Biscay at this time of year can be just as violent as the southern lows.
Duel for victory in drifting
Next up in Les Sables are Romain Attanasio and Yannick Bestaven, out of the race since his stop in Ushuaia, and then we’ll have the verdict on the group of eight battling for 15th place. At the moment, they are at the front of a front with strong winds which are only set to increase, I think that the frontrunners will manage to stay ahead of this front until they reach the entrance to the Bay of Biscay. Their aim should really be to get up to full throttle and race across fairly flat seas in a SW’ly wind. They will then pick up some NW’ly wind behind the front (see my routing of Lazare below) to take a fairly direct route towards Les Sables. In the second part of the Bay of Biscay, around the longitude of Gijon, they should fall into a ridge of high pressure and finish upwind in medium to very light airs in the final hours.
What’s going to be interesting is to see if the foilers manage to open up enough of a gap in the front to prevent the daggerboard boats from getting back into the ridge, given that the latter are much more at ease in light airs. I’m curious to see what the outcome will be, but if I were Damien Seguin and Alan Roura, I would press the accelerate button right now to dig a little deeper into Benjamin (Ferré) and Tanguy (Le Turquais) and get a bit of fat. In theory, the ‘victory’ for the daggerboard boats shouldn’t go to one of the latter two, as Jean (Le Cam) will be the first to see the front pass over him, so he should fall before the others into a north-westerly wind and heavy seas, and see the gap with Benjamin and Tanguy widen. I have the impression that Benjamin is still a little faster than Tanguy, who doesn’t have all his sails, and given the conditions, Monnoyeur‘s superior versatility is in my opinion an advantage over Lazare. You can tell that this story of the first daggerboard boat is a real sporting challenge for them, especially as they’re both good chatters, so whoever wins is going to come and tease the other!
As this is my last review of the Vendée Globe, I’d like to share with you the lessons I’ve learnt from it in a few points:
- The most striking image for me will be that of Yoann and Charlie rounding the Horn, 9 minutes apart. For me, it’s a powerful symbol of the crazy sporting intensity of this Vendée Globe, which has also been reflected in the figures, with Charlie under the 65-day record and Sébastien Simon’s 24-hour record (615 miles). This intensity, apart from a few skippers who have sometimes been a little isolated, has been found at all levels of the fleet, with compact groups that have not let up for weeks on end, and there has been action everywhere from start to finish.
- The surprise was undoubtedly Sébastien Simon, who blew me away the most. We knew he was a very good sailor, he won the Solitaire and did some great things in the Imoca, but his previous campaign had been complicated and he hadn’t shown off his full potential. Here, despite breaking his foil, he has shown that he is in the same category as the top two, with a much smaller budget and team.
- In terms of communication, I’m not going to be original, but Violette Dorange has made her mark. Afterwards, people are discovering that on this Vendée, but she’s been communicating in this way for a long time. I remember that when she was racing in the Figaro circuit, she was the only one who managed to tell the whole story of her project, from the winter training sessions to the last race of the season, she did her own video editing, it’s a skill she’s really developed over the years. I was also impressed by Yoann, who managed to leave the sporting dimension at the top of the pile while keeping his communication very clean. I think that his Vendée was very well followed internally, and he managed to involve all the employees of his sponsors. He’s clearly a fine example to follow, striking a good balance between performance and communication.
- This Vendée Globe has been a rich learning experience for someone like me, who aspires to take part in the Vendée Globe 2028. In particular, the fact that almost all the skippers sailed a lot during the three years before the race which clearly helped to reduce the number of technical problems. We haven’t talked about it too much, because the teams often remain discreet on the subject, but in the races prior to the Vendée, there were a lot of problems, particularly structural ones, which led to major work being carried out. But that enabled the skippers to arrive at the start of the round the world race with tried and tested boats, which they were able to push.
Today, I’m trying to take advantage of the current media hype around the race to try and convince partners to get on board and complete my budget, which would enable me to buy a boat and make my project official. What’s certain is that for those who want to buy a high-performance boat, and I’m thinking in particular of Yoann’s boat, which has just been put on the market and is going to be much courted (see the mercato below), you have to be ready to press the button quickly. I’ll be sure to keep you updated in Tip & Shaft, and I wish you all the best for the rest of the Vendée Globe!”
Photo: Pierre Bouras
