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. Gaston Morvan is at the helm this Friday.
“Last week, Loïs mentioned a deficit of over 400 miles for the daggerboard group on the leading pack at the exit from the Doldrums, and it is around 1,800 miles by the time the frontrunner Charlie Dalin passed the longitude of Good Hope on Friday et 5.45 pm (CET). The situation has clearly been favorable to the leaders, who have hooked onto a low-pressure system fairly quickly in Brazil, with ideal conditions to go fast and straight towards the Cape of Good Hope, i.e. well-directed wind and not too heavy seas.
We saw the kind of tracks that the Jules Verne Trophy contenders who are about to set off this Friday (Sodebo Ultim 3 and SVR Lazartigue) are no doubt dreaming of. Behind them, one after the other, the stragglers were sucked in by lighter winds, allowing the rich to become even richer. The gain is really significant for Charlie Dalin, Seb Simon, Yoann Richomme and Thomas Ruyant.
These conditions also gave rise to new 24-hour single-handed monohull records, with Sébastien Simon clocking up 615.33 miles at an average speed of 25.64 miles! That’s quite a performance, when you consider that the crewed record for the 100-foot Comanche (which lasted almost eight years, from 2015 to 2023) was 618 miles. It shows both how far the Imoca boats have progressed technologically, quickly achieving a high degree of reliability, and how much the sailors have pulled on the machines.
The small differences between the leaders over the last few days can be explained by minor technical problems – given the average speeds, you can quickly lose miles if you have to slow down – but also by sail choices and the rhythm the sailor decides to set on board; to what extent, for example, he accepts to sail with larger front sails. I saw a video of Yoann in which he said he had spent a night under large gennaker in 25 knots of wind – which also explains his positioning a little below the others – it’s very demanding! In these conditions, you can either reduce your sail, at the risk of losing ground on the others, or keep your sail, but tighten your buttocks for a few hours. It’s all a question of balance, and boat management too, as everyone sees things a little differently.
We’ll see at the end who’s been the smartest, but it’s clear that Seb Simon put the cursor a little higher than the others, and it was important at that point to pull hard on the boat to stay with the leading group. Now, the gaps are still quite small, with the top four within 50 miles of each other, which gives us hope that the race will remain just as tight over the coming weeks. Behind them, the gaps are widening, and I think that to benefit from the same conditions as the leaders, you need to avoid conceding more than 300 to 400 miles to Charlie Dalin, who leads the fleet on Friday.
We’ve now reached the end of the “corridor” scenario we’ve been experiencing this week, with more play, gybing and placement; strategically, it’s going to be more interesting than the big straightaway of the last few days. As far as the leaders are concerned, the challenge over the next few hours will be to position their gybe point to make a long tack on starboard tack in a wind that’s going to refuse. The wind isn’t going to be very stable, and we should see small differences in speed.
The long starboard tack should last until Saturday night, after which they’ll gybe again and choose their positioning according to a big low-pressure system arriving around Wednesday-Thursday at the longitude of the Kerguelens, the first of this intensity, with 35-40 knots. The choice (see routing above) is between a more direct trajectory to the south, with a real gain – because behind it, you recover pressure earlier from the south – but strong winds on Wednesday and Thursday, or a more conservative route to the north, on which you get beaten up less during the passage of the front, but with little wind behind it.
It’s going to be really interesting to see who’s going to want to attack and face up to the depression, at the risk of breaking, and who’s going to prefer to play it safe and manage their equipment over the long term. In any case, from now on, it’s another Vendée Globe; up to now, even if conditions have sometimes been uncomfortable with speed, they’ve had acceptable wind strengths and sea states that weren’t too strong, and they’ve continued to sail under large gennaker. Now they’re going to change mode, it’s no longer going to be business as usual, we’ll undoubtedly see some lateral deviations, and the question is also to know what averages they’ll be able to maintain. There will undoubtedly be differences between routing and actual speeds. We’ll see which boats can go fast in the roughest seas, and perhaps that’s where the architectural differences will make themselves felt.
As for the group of daggerboard boats, from now on they’ll benefit from very good conditions to make good headway to Good Hope, under the St. Helena high, with moderate downwind conditions. They’ll also have to deal with a low-pressure system in the middle of next week, and it’s better to be at the front of the pack than behind it, as the stragglers are more likely to be affected by this low-pressure system, and therefore to pay a higher price, while the leaders will be able to position themselves more easily. Overall, I see them passing Good Hope around next Thursday (see image above), 5-6 days behind the frontrunners.
Unlike four years ago, this time the foilers made a big difference, especially the new boats. Among the top nine, eight were launched after the last Vendée Globe, and only Boris Herrmann is not in the right pack. We can see that a real technical hierarchy has emerged, and it’s funny to see that it’s almost the age of the boats that determines the ranking!
The frontrunners are gradually closing in on Armel Le Cléac’h’s race record (74 days 3 hours 35 minutes). They were a long way behind coming out of the Doldrums because of the transition zone before the trade winds, which caused them to lose 4 days. Since then, they’ve made up some of that lost ground, and I think they’ve got the means to make great time all the way to Cape Horn, even if there are some good gaps without much wind between each low-pressure area. They’re going to have to manage these transition zones well, as it’s not going to be easy, with a lot of tailwinds and therefore gybes.”
Photo: Martin Viezzer
