Vendée Globe ..... Savage!

For two months the sailboats of Vendée Globe have been circumnavigating planet and only 12 of them - of the 30 who started off they have possibilities of reaching the goal. The spectacle continues in most exciting of all the regatas. Gusts of wind of 70 knots, mountainous waves, the wild oceans where always a shock happens, dismasting,… a catastrophe. The spectacle and the emotion can be sweepings by the sea in only seconds.

Ever since Michel Desjoyeaux passed the Cape Horn doing North course, it has not done more than to gain miles and to hold fast like new leader of the race. Back, Marc Guillemot has I also reach the feared Cabo, whereas Jonny Malbon and Jean-Piere Dick arrived at Auckland in New Zealand. Desjoyeaux already surpasses to Roland Jourdain in than 100 miles doing more definitively to lose the hegemony to this last one that it cannot “step on” thorough the accelerator of his boat, after the shock with a cetacean that has forced to him to realize emergency repairs.

… they support gusts of wind of 70 knots in half of a giant sea with waves of 12 meters…

From Brazil a strong depression with gusts of wind of 40 knots is prepared that suggest a prudent navigation. Meanwhile we found out the abandonment of the Artemis, that has finished regata after deslaminar its greater candle what it forces to him to return to Auckland where it has been with Sebastian Josse also outside race. The Paprec-Virbac on the other hand also has been victim from a floating UFO the past 31 of December that took of curdle its rudder to him of port.

The meteo of the Pacific is threatening for the seven participants who still sail in their waters. Thompson, Boissières and Caffari at the moment support gusts of wind of 70 knots in half of a giant sea with waves of 12 meters!  Marc Giulemot (Safran) commented in its passage by the Cape Horn “… Is well passing the Cape Horn. The night was very intense, with impressive water mountains and wilder it approached at the most me the continental platform. It was necessary to go fast not to let itself catch by the waves. Much stress and total impossibility to sleep not one minute. As soon as I passed the Cape Horn, the wind smoothly lowered and since then balance sheet on a basic sea that little by little is moved away and calming as I move away of Furnaces…”.

Dramatic conditions of the ocean in Vendée Globe 2009

To many brave competitors they only have left the consolation of the majority… “Badly of many, consolation of idiots”. And he is that to 15 either 20 days of the end of the race, or there are 17 abandonments, of which 10 dismasted complete ones. Shocks with cetaceans and floating objects unknown have taken place that are broken rudders and luffs, forcing to carry out emergency repairs that in many cases have lead to the abandonment of regata.

Sebatian Josse in the BT underwent a brutal upset due to a rompiente wave that was lowered on his hauls in on the high seas. The Cheminées Poujoulat de Bernard Stamm sank weeks ago in terrible waters of the Kerguelen Islands where the frozen waters of the South Pacific are swept by infernal winds. Its boat could have been reclaimed and have been transferred in an oceanographic ship to the islands of the Meeting. Yann Eliès had to be evacuated on the high seas hurt with a femur divided after a fall in a maneuver, and now also it touches the turn to him to Vincent Riou that finishes arriving at Port Williams in the Channel from Beagle, in the Chilean Land of Fire.

Jean Le Cam has been saved of a safe death by Vincent Riou and in the maneuver of safely an important element of the rigging of the PRB he underwent a breakage that although repaired of emergencia, now leaves outside race the PRB.

Vincent Riou says to us: “. It was maneuvering to approach me the channel of Beagle when it suddenly yielded the port shroud that already it had repaired of provisional form after the shock with the VM Matériaux when approaching to me to save to Jean Him cam. The wood went slowly to the water without nothing could make avoid it! There was wave enough reason why I could not make nothing to recover it since to approach him he was quite dangerous. A ship of the Chilean Navy has towed me until Port Williams, where I am very tired now…”

For that reason to continue in race, although is to 6,300 miles of the leader, as it happens to him at the moment to Raphaël Dinelli in waters of New Zealand, is an authentic privilege.  All the participants must be continuously making do-it-yourself work and repairing both detail of the boat since the machines go almost always to top and the material simply she becomes weak due to the enormous effort which she is put under.