The Ultimate Four of Brest Atlantic have now passed their second and last passing mark, Robben Island, a stone's throw from Cape Town. The first was Maxi Edmond de Rothschild on Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 8:16 p.m. Leaving the island where Mandela was imprisoned on the port side, he will have reached this new strategic course in 15 days 9 hours and 16 minutes at sea, at an average speed of 24.8 knots.
" We went from 30 knots of wind to zero in not even a minute, we were wondering when we were going to get out of it. Finally, we had a wind that came back from the other side and we were able to clear ourselves. I think we can stay "tanked" for hours and hours in Cape Bay, so we're happy to be out of it. Now, the next crossing point is Brest." explained Franck Cammas.
A little less than eight hours later, the trimaran MACIF followed. The latter stopped again for a technical stopover (helm transmission system and on the port foil lift system) at the cape in front of the South African port, which lasted 6 hours and 25 minutes. François Gabart and Gwénolé Gahinet returned to the race at 10:20 am on Thursday 21 November and crossed Robben Island in third place 24 minutes later, 14 hours and 28 minutes after Maxi Edmond de Rothschild, and 3 hours and 10 minutes after Actual Leader, who finished in second place, his best position since leaving Brest on 5 November (Yves Le Blevec and Alex Pella covered 390 miles less than Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier on the Rio-Le Cap section).
" We had a lot of small problems that made it difficult to manoeuvre the boat, we took advantage of the fact that we were passing near the coast to make a small stopover. We arrived right at daybreak on Cape Town, the area is still beautiful, this mountain (Table Mountain) has a certain charisma, but we didn't have much time to contemplate, we were more in concentration to try to move on. The good news is that we're leaving with a boat that's fine. We have two boats to bite into in front of us, one that is not very far away, the other that is a little further away. We saw Actual and Sodebo in Cape Town, we're going to try to go see Gitana, we're going to have to get high to get them, but we're here for that, we want to play to the end" explained François Gabart in a video from the ship.
As the blue trimaran set off again for the race, Sodebo Ultim 3 made for the port of Cape Town at 10:30 am. As a reminder, Thomas Coville and Jean-Luc Nélias lost the back of their starboard float following a collision with a UFO.
" We crossed MACIF on arrival, then we went back to the centre of Cape Town to check the boat and find out if, following the three shocks we had on our three different rudders, the integrity of the boat was confirmed for the rest of the course. We'll know more tonight and make a decision later." said the skipper of the brand new trimaran.
