ULTIMES
The recovery for Le Cléac'h
After a nice start at Pointe de Grouin in a nice 20 knot southerly breeze, the Ultimates took the lead in the fleet, led by François Gabart. But quickly, Sébastien Josse and his flying trimaran quickly took the lead, sometimes at an average speed of nearly 38 knots! In the middle of the night, he was also the first to leave an area of light winds, leaving his competitors behind. As for Armel le Cléac'h, who left Roscoff on the evening of 4 November after a 35-minute express break, he is 52 miles behind the first - François Gabart. It is in rocket mode since at 6:30 in the morning, it was nearly a hundred miles behind...
"I made an express stop in Roscoff. I had to stop to repair the broken part before leaving. I went back to the back. I'm a little off balance, but I'm going to cross this low to have a stronger wind behind me, a NW'ly wind. It's not easy; between the files we analyze and the wind on the water, there are a lot of different things. We're trying to find the best way to get the NW'ly wind behind us. There are a lot of people on the water, a lot of traffic. We're going to try not to fall too far behind the conditions that are coming in behind and that will give us a little more sea and wind. We're going to try to get out of this, but we're definitely in hunter mode right now. You have to be patient" explains Armel le Cléac'h.
The damage to Josse
Unfortunately, while sailing at the head of the fleet, the skipper of the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild suffered a sudden stop shortly after 5:30 am. When he exited the deck, he noticed that part of the bow of his starboard float had been lost shortly after 0530. With the night on site at that time, the heavy swell - nearly 4.5 metres - and the wind - 30 knots from the north - it was difficult to measure the damage. The skipper was studying with his team and his routing cell a solution to get to shore as quickly as possible. Indeed, a new low will sweep across the Bay of Biscay in the coming hours and the sailor must take cover.
MULTI50
In the Multi50, Erwan Le Roux also had to make a stop in Roscoff to solve a rudder problem that caused a water leak, without gravity, but penalizing. After a 4-hour pit-stop, the skipper of FenêtréA Mix Buffet set sail again around 9pm and is in last place in a fleet led since Monday morning by Lalou Roucayrol. Indeed, Armel Tripon (Réauté Chocolat) was the leader, since the start, of the 50-foot multihulls, all of which passed through the south of Ushant, through the Fromveur channel, in the wake of the first ULTIMES.
IMOCA
The fleet split in two before the Breton tip, with Alex Thomson never doing like everyone else and choosing to pass over the DST, with a route very far north. The leading group composed of Vincent Riou, Jeremie Beyou and Yann Eliès was much further south. The speeds have dropped significantly due to the passage of a slight depression, but installed around fifty miles from Ushant...
The fleet is now led by Alex Thomson, who is always much further north than his comrades. Then came Vincent Riou (PRB) and Paul Meilhat (ADM), who broke away from the rest of the fleet.
Pit-Stop
Louis Burton must also return to Roscoff or Saint-Malo since his starboard foil well is in bulk. Finally, Jean Galfione, skipper of the Class40 Serenis Consulting, warned his technical team this morning that he was heading to Brest for a technical stop.
CLASS40
In Class40, several of them have followed Alex Thomson's route, notably Louis Duc to the north of the DST (Traffic Separation System) or Maxime Sorel. Yoann Richomme and Luke Berry - who chose the South - and were trying to get out of the soft depressionary
The Guadeloupian Willy Bissau had to be towed from the Seven Islands to Roscoff, following an unexpected grounding in front of Perros-Guirec
"This first night was intense because we've already made 4 sail changes. We passed a wind sector at 25 knots. We're approaching a low that was expected, I just sent the spinnaker. It's always a bit of a perilous exercise, but everything went well and I feel like I'm not too badly positioned. It's a dark night, it's complicated, you can't see anything at all. We're starting to cross the cargo ships, we'll have to be on standby. There will be a bit of an erratic wind, but now it's stabilizing. We're already going through a series of small fronts tonight. There's going to be work all day. I managed to eat a little bit. I was a little confused, my stomach turned upside down. Strategies are not easy, it takes a long time" explains Yoann Richomme.
