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.
“This New Year’s week has once again been a busy one, with Charlie (Dalin) and Yoann (Richomme) battling it out at the head of the fleet, and their pursuers making their way after Cape Horn in difficult conditions in the South Atlantic. The latest to leave the Pacific this Friday morning were Romain Attanasio and Damien Seguin, and it’s always striking to see, through the videos they send, what a relief it is for everyone to leave the Southern Ocean.
It’s never happened to me before, and I hope it will in the future, but more than the others, it seems a symbolic milestone. Mentally, you have to tell yourself that once you’ve rounded it, you’ve passed the hardest part, even if, as we’ll see, you can’t take it for granted, with the South Atlantic being particularly complicated.
Next in line for Cape Horn is Jean Le Cam, who is arriving downwind in fairly strong winds. He should be there on Saturday morning, some 24 hours behind Romain and Damien. Can he catch up with them? Given the conditions in the South Atlantic, with transitions, upwind sailing and high-pressure bubbles which sometimes tend to rise quite quickly and eat away at you, it seems possible. All the more so as Jean, in addition to his immense experience – his sixth Vendée Globe! -, has a daggerboard boat that seems rather adaptable in the medium. So if I were Romain and Damien, I wouldn’t bury him.
As for the duel at the head of the race, Charlie and Yoann are in the process of extracting themselves from the ridge of high pressure from the St. Helena high, which was blocking their path and extended almost all the way to Brazil, forcing Seb Simon to go ashore. It was a really technical passage in light airs, which Charlie took advantage of to climb the mast on Thursday to repair the runners, and managed to come out on top with a lead of over 60 miles at 3pm on Friday, compared with just over 100 miles behind Yoann last weekend.
How can we explain this? At this stage of the race, of course, they’re not going to talk about their respective problems, so I can’t tell you if one or the other is handicapped, but what is certain is that, as we saw on the way down the Atlantic, Macif seems better suited to the conditions they’ve had over the last few days. As much as Paprec Arkéa seemed more at ease when they were side by side in strong winds in the Southern Ocean, Macif, undoubtedly lighter in these phases, seems more adaptable thanks to its tighter hull shape and foils. Charlie is also very good at this game, and on paper, he has a tool better suited to this part of the course.
Now they’re back in the southern hemisphere trade winds, which will no doubt smooth out these differences and push them all the way to the equator, which they should cross on Sunday evening for us, and the Doldrums, which shouldn’t slow them down too much as it’s not shifted to the west. On the face of it, we shouldn’t see any major reversals of fortune between them, and the same goes for the start of the start of the North Atlantic in the trade winds.
In fact, the last major weather obstacle on their route to Les Sables will be negotiating the Azores high, which looks to be fairly extensive and westerly at the moment. The trick will be to position themselves to cross this anticyclone if it gets in the way, and to catch up with the train of lows, which means getting the boat to work well upwind, as the further east you shift, the freer you are to position yourself east/west. We can imagine that Charlie might be rather comfortable with such a scenario. It’s still a bit far off to give a precise ETA, but today I’m envisaging the duo arriving around January 15.
Behind him, Sébastien Simon has opted for a very westerly route, close to Brazil. With his starboard foil missing, he didn’t always have to think strategically in the same way as the others. As the bubble of high pressure stretched westwards, he opted for true wind speed by going for the wind, even if it was head-on. Initially, this enabled him to get closer, but now that the wind is more in line with Charlie and Yoann, he’s going to lose ground again. Today, it’s hard to imagine him catching up with the leading duo. His priority now is to hold on to third place, which seems to be going well, given that he’s got a good lead over fourth-placed Thomas Ruyant, and that a lot has happened behind him!
Starting with the loss of Vulnerable’s J2, I’ve seen the pictures, it was hard, he found himself lying on the water in 60 knots, the files didn’t predict such strong winds, he had to go through some difficult hours to pick everything up. No more J2 is bound to be a handicap upwind in a medium wind. I don’t know his exact sail configuration, but it means he’ll have to switch from code 0 or “jib top” if he has one – a sail that plays the role of the J2 in the south so as not to wear it out too much – to J3, which means one less crossover and makes the boat less versatile. Mentally, we’ve seen that he’s been affected, but Thomas is resourceful and can hold on, even if it’s going to be hard work. Today, he has a lead of around 150 miles over Paul Meilhat, who pulled off one of the week’s great coups by managing to extricate himself from the group of five boats behind him thanks to a good tack to the west after the Falklands, where the others went as far as the ice zone.
I think his boat must also be a little more at ease in these medium conditions and less rough seas. If he can catch up with Thomas before the equator, he could be in contention for fourth place. Also worth watching is Justine (Mettraux) who, at the rear of this group, is currently circling the low-pressure center in which Nico Lunven, Jérémie Beyou, Boris Herrmann and Sam Goodchild find themselves. What’s certain is that they’re not out of the woods yet before they hit the trade winds, as they’re going to find some light air behind the low-pressure area they’re currently in.
I don’t know this part of the route, but it looks really difficult, with very unstable winds rubbing up against the South American continent and models that are struggling to be very accurate. I remember Tom Laperche, when he raced in The Ocean Race, telling me that he had experienced this, with the boat lying on the water in a violent squall, sails tucked in, forced to wait and unable to right it because it was too risky to tear them. 11th Hour Racing Team also arrived in Itajai with their mainsail completely destroyed. And all this was crewed, so you can imagine how complicated it must be to manage single-handed.
Now, even if we can see that quite a few boats are suffering, with the fifth retirement this week, that of Yannick Bestaven, and more or less significant damage, such as that of Isabelle Joschke who lost a foil, I’m surprised, given the number of competitors and the history of the race, to see so few major breakages in this Vendée Globe. 5 retirements out of 40, that’s very few. Is it because the boats are going faster, which means the sailors are more in control of their destiny? No doubt to some extent, but preparation also certainly plays a part, because from a weather point of view, I don’t have the impression that they’ve been particularly spared in the Southern Ocean. Let’s hope it lasts!”
Photo: Alea / Vendée Globe
