Jean Pierre Dick homing in on Les Sables d’Olonne
After 96 days of racing Jean Pierre Dick (Virbac-Paprec) is making good inroads into Les Sables d’Olonne, just anticipating a WNW windshift before he switches over onto a port tack to a possible finish this Sunday 13th February. He is currently 475 miles West of Lorient in NW France and 548.3 miles from taking sixth place in this epic Vendée Globe, this home straight proving particularly stressful with multiple sail changes and careful gybes. In the battle for seventh Conrad Humphreys (Hellomoto) is beating upwind to the Azores, the 100 mile lead he’d expected over Joé Seeten (Arcelor Dunkerque) now a reality. The latest weather models show that the high pressure is going to slow progress up for the duo and the British skipper now estimates his arrival in Les Sables d’Olonne to be 20th February. Tenth placed Benoît Parnaudeau (Max Havelaar / Best Western) is set to cross the equator tomorrow, leaving just three skippers in the Southern hemisphere.
An uncharacteristically tired-sounding Jean-Pierre Dick (Virbac-Paprec) is feeling the pressure today, still hand-steering for a large part of the day, between multiple gybes and very little sleep. The Nice skipper is now around 550 miles from a finish which he admitted today has been an objective for the past three years but it’s not going to be easy: “I’m coming from the south and the wind is in the North...” he said earlier, summing up the difficulties out on the water. “I gybed at around 7 last night and again very early this morning. I wanted to wait until daybreak but in fact it was still night. I have a 22 to 27 knot SW wind and I’m gliding along well. I am helming a lot as I’m going to have to drop down to the finish at a certain point with the wind on the aft quarter. I’m very tired as it’s pretty stressful sailing because the pilot makes the boat yaw around and use lots of energy. Gybing is always a stressful business, particularly with the fragile gooseneck. I end up having to put in a reef and canting the keel by hand pump as I haven’t the power I need. If all goes to plan the finish will be a great moment.”
Conditions are far from simple for the duo chasing seventh either. “It’s been quite breezy and bumpy over the past 24 hours” said the fairly upbeat British skipper Conrad Humphreys on Hellomoto today. “I’d prefer to be where Joé is as conditions look nicer there while I’m being forced to punch into choppy seas. It’s still very changeable but perhaps the pendulum has swung back in my direction. All the weather models are suggesting that this high does join up with another high to form one big circulation which eventually drifts to the north. If Joé is intent on going round the high then he may end up going up to Southern Ireland and then down which is maybe giving him more headaches than it’s giving me now. I’m very low on fuel which means that I’m doing a lot of hand steering, which is obviously tiring. Later down the track I think Joé may cross behind me. Progress looks quite slow for the next 72 hours and it will doubtless be hard all the way to the finish. At the moment I feel that I’ve made the right move tactically even if the fact of the matter is that we’ve got a 1500 mile beat to Les Sables d’Olonne which isn’t too kind on the boat. The last thing you want at this stage is to put a lot of stress on it upwind. It obviously stresses the rig and the keel and the hull quite a lot. In the next 12 hours I’ll probably see the breeze head as I approach the Azores. Then I’ll probably have to tack for 100 miles. It’ll be a pretty nasty tack to the South before I tack back. By that time the high should have moved over and then I’ll be greeted by some nice 25 knot headwinds. That should rattle the boat around nicely and it’ll be like that for a while.”
Hanging a big westerly option right round the outside of the Azores archipelago, 140 miles SW of the island of Flores, the Dunkirk skipper Joé Seeten is still within striking distance of Conrad Humphreys. Joé is currently making around 4 knots more boat speed to the detriment of about 4 knots less VMG. The racing is intense and with less than 1500 miles to the finish there is no sign of the pressure dropping off for either player.
Quotes from the Boats:
Benoît Parnaudeau (Max Havelaar / Best Western):
“I’m finally beginning to sail again! It’s been two weeks since I’ve glided along like this. There aren’t any flying fish but I do have three gannets behind the boat. Three days ago there was a bird that wanted to land on my head in the middle of the night. I thought a helicopter was behind me. There wasn’t a sound and then suddenly I heard some powerful beating beside my head. It landed on the boat and spent the night there. The Doldrums looks quite small and it’s moving quite a lot. One day it’s at 1° North and then it’s at 3°. I think I’ll be there in 36 to 48 hours. At the moment it’s great as the sensations have returned with the wind. I am reaching under one reef and solent. I have a little DIY to do as I noticed that there was some considerable fraying on the tiller rope. I’m keeping a close eye on it though!”
Anne Liardet (Roxy):
“Hello everyone. That’s it, I’ve caught onto the trades. It’s not very strong at the moment and Roxy is upwind with a piece of Brazil barring the route ahead but I’m fairly sure I won’t fall back into the calms again. I’m getting out of it quicker than Benoît did. Rafu (Raphael) and Karen would say that I was lucky but I’d say it is the fruit of an intense period of reflection (yes, yes!) after listening to the wind ‘singing’. The index thing is not to go and get stuck in the calm (like I did when I went inshore off Brazil) and to take the helm if the calm threatens. (That’s why I went along the Le Maire Straits: a big calm was coming in from the West and to avoid it you had to climb North as quickly as possible). My children say to me that they find that the time passed quickly at the start but now time is dragging and it’s time that “Mum was back home!” We have a project for when I get back: watching a good video, sprawled out on the settee dipping into pears with chocolate melted in a pan over a high flame... In the meantime the sea is 28° and the temperature is preventing my desalinator from working. Fortunately I’ve got some spare bottles of drinking water as the water that comes out of the machine is undrinkable. It’s less salty than the sea water though so it makes a lovely shower!... I have squally weather at the moment but other than that I have an established wind of 13 to 14 knots. Roxy goes through the water well and I’m under one reef indexsail and solent. I think I’m going to go to the trinquette as the boat wallow in the water a bit too much in the 20 knot squalls. I discovered a bottle of champagne, some foie gras, some pieces of salmon and some salted butter caramels! I only discovered it yesterday!”
Karen Leibovici (Benefic):
“I had to battle all night as the wind was turning constantly. At around 1700 GMT a big calm landed on me and I was stopped dead. The wind picked up a little during the night but it’s a nightmare. Manoeuvre after manoeuvre. That’s why I’m exhausted. In addition to that I gave myself a real scare after a tack as I had completely forgotten the hydro-generator and it had wrapped itself around the rudder, propeller or keel, I don’t know which. I prayed really hard that the luck would shine on me and it worked. I don’t know how it happened but after several attempts it came free just by pulling it. It’s just as well as I didn’t want to lose it and I didn’t want to dive below for it either. Along with all that I got my hair stuck in the machine yesterday too, which was a fright. I really had one of the those days. I hoisted the gennaker ten times after which point I gave up on it. I am a bit ashamed as I’m racing but after a while I just can’t do anymore. What with the sail changes and bailing out the boat my body just says Stop! Meals are going to be simple now that my desalinator has given up the ghost. I’ve got rice, lentils and tuna left. Yesterday I had rice and tuna...”
Conrad Humphreys (Hellomoto):
“It’s been very shifty and yesterday I ended up bearing away 20 degrees as the sea state was so bad and the boat was just taking a real hammering. I’ve got a fuel problem too so I’ve been trying to resolve that. We eliminated what we thought was dirt in the bottom of the tank so I made an fuel change which was quite entertaining in 25 knots upwind. I managed not to get too much diesel all over myself. It’s been quite a tough period. I managed to get a reasonable amount of sleep last night and did some hand-steering again yesterday just trying to save on juice.
It is going to be marginal whether we’ll have enough fuel to get to the finish. These fuel issues mean that I hesitate about putting the radar on and in big seas it’s difficult to eliminate which things. The alarm is very quiet too and it didn’t wake me last night. You spend so much time thinking that it must be 1/100 or even 1/1000 chances of you hitting something and of course the closer you get to land the greater the risk. In 24 hours time I’ll be right up on the Azores then and I’m bound to see some shipping. The most important thing is trying to keep the autopilot steering as without an autopilot it becomes a whole new game to try and get home.”
Source: Vendée Globe
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French Media: Caroline Concetti, Anne Millet and Soazig Guého
International Media: Sabina Mollart-Rogerson, Ophélie Théron
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