12.11.2005
Press Release No. 12
Saturday 12th November, 2005
www.jacques-vabre.com
TJV05: OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE
• Leaders at 14:44 GMT: Virbac-Paprec (IMOCA 60), Banque Populaire (ORMA 60), Gryphon Solo (Open 50 Monohull), Crepes Whaou ! (Open 50 Multihull)
• Abandon: Multihull Open 50 Acanthe Ingenierie abandoned the race overnight after dismasting off the African coast. There are now 4 Open 50 multihulls racing.
• Trimarans under tow: The 22m trawler ‘Damocles’ has been towing Foncia since Thursday night towards Lorient at 4 knots. It is still inverted as the sea and winds have been too strong to right it. Alain Gautier and members of the team have managed to recover parts of the boat: two gennakers, the Solent and staysail, the boom broken in two, but not the mast which cracked apart into several pieces and definitely split in two.
• Trimarans under tow: Orange Project is also under tow from the fishing vessel ‘Bara An Ty’ towards Lorient at a rate of 3.5 knots. Towing in these conditions is incredibly difficult and indextaining the anchoring points on the inverted trimaran is extremely tricky in rough seas. They are not expected to arrive in Lorient before Monday night or Tuesday.
• Stops & Restarts: ORMA Class leader, Banque Populaire didn’t make the intended pitstop in Cape Verde, which has led 2nd placed Géant skipper Michel Desjoyeaux to assume it was a ‘coup de bluff’...fair play or not? Gitana X made a longer pit-stop than scheduled to replace their ripped indexsail as they discovered that they also needed to replace a burned out ventilator in the engine. Acanthe Ingenierie is on its way to Villamoura under jury rig after rigging failure cause the dismasting off the Moroccan coast line on Thursday night.
IMOCA 60 CLASS UPDATE
It’s been a whole week that the Monohull fleet has been racing in the Transat Jacques Vabre from Le Havre to Bahia, and the pace has been relentless, starting with storm force gales across the Bay of Biscay and straight into unusually strong 30 knot NE Trade winds due to the Azores High extending its reach across the Atlantic. All sounding much more fatigued on the satellite phone now, a lack of physical recuperation is evident amongst the skippers, who are all finding their own ways to cope with the infernal pace of surfing permanently above 20 knots boat speed day and night towards the Doldrums.
The temperature has started to rise nearer the tropics, but the humidity is intense as white water explodes onto the deck, drenching the skippers with every wave, as they both have to stay on deck to hand steer through the surf at 25+ knots and trim the sails at the same time, in pitch black or clear day. Thankfully, the wind should soften this weekend below 15 degrees latitude, but the competition in the IMOCA 60ft class is so close that even with this drop in conditions the skippers won’t relax at all as they fight for every fraction of a mile on this 4,130 mile race course.
The Doldrums, or Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, where the Northern Hemisphere NE trade winds converge with the Southern Hemisphere SE Trade winds, is a meteorological phenomenon of unpredictable and constantly fluctuating winds, which either cancel each other out or form into black squalls in the space of minutes in the same zone. Actually, the Doldrums don’t look to be that active, perhaps a result of the number of devastating cyclones this autumn (Katrina, Wilma…) which have taken out the excess of equatorial humidity. The ideal gateway for the Monohulls is between 22 and 25 degrees West, and they will be entering this zone in 24hrs time. Meanwhile the top 6 monohulls have all kept well to the West of the Cape Verde islands to avoid the turbulence created by these land masses. Already positioned between 24 – 26 degrees West, the front pack of IMOCA boats will soon be coming up on a higher course to head directly south when the wind shifts more to the East and drops to 15 knots.
Leaders Virbac-Paprec (Dick / Peyron) and Sill et Veolia just 22m behind in their wake on the same SSW heading, have not given each other an inch in the last two days. Fourth placed Ecover (Golding / Wavre) is not showing the kind of performance its skipper was hoping for due to tip of the starboard rudder coming off in a collision with unidentified debris in the water off the Canary Islands. Golding expressed his frustration today: “It’s like trying to steer a rally car at high speed with no tread on the tyres. It’s just frustrating that we’ve done more than enough work but it’s not delivering the results. We were shocked at this morning’s poll. On board we feel like we’re travelling a million miles an hour but our speed is down. We have to make bigger turns on the wheel to compensate and these adjustments act like a brake.”
Skandia (Thompson / Oxley) may have taken more time to find its groove, but the Angleo-Australian duo on board are working well together and experimenting with the sail combinations in the heavy going conditions to keep hanging on Ecover’s coat tails just 38m behind, and stave off the renewed push from Pro-Form (Thiercelin / Drouglazet) who reported that they “have nothing to lose and all to gain, so we’re going all out on the attack.” Pro-Form was ahead between Madeira and the Canaries, but Skandia sailed more to the West and made it through, whereas Pro-Form had to gybe to get out of the wind shadow and that gave Skandia the lead. “But we’re not even half way through the race and are only 2 hours ahead of them, which is nothing…” the ever-cautious Thompson retorts.
OPEN 50 CLASS 2 MONOHULL UPDATE
Gryphon Solo (Harris/Hall) has at last gybed south positioned to the West of the direct route after a long leg heading SW to reposition better for passing the Canaries without running into the turbulence generated by the mountainous islands, and for benefiting more from the strong NE winds off the edge of the Azores High. Second placed Vedettes de Bréhat is over to the East, lower than the leader but further from the route, and likely to pass between the islands in perhaps an attempt to benefit from the funnel effect of the wind through the passage. Artforms (Stone / Owen) has just passed Polarity Solo (Metcalf / Finn) at the back of the Open 50 fleet, both teams now comfortably in the Trade winds and clocking 14 knots boat speed to propel them south on the direct route to the west of Madeira. Both teams reported blown out spinnakers in gusty conditions, but Kip Stone added that his incident was caused by a “real big fish”, which bore the brunt of the unintentional collision even if the spi ragged itself to pieces in the ensuing luff. Ryan Finn shared his relief to be “racing at last, after spending the first week still putting the boat together. We just don’t want to miss the party in Brazil!”
MULTIHULL UPDATE: ORMA 60 & CLASS 2
As the ORMA multihull fleet has to race via the Ascension Islands, their best route past the Cape Verde Islands is over to the East off the African coast. Leader Banque Populaire (Bidegorry / Lemonchois) never made the intended pitstop – a bluff or not – and so still lead by 85m over Géant (Desjoyeaux / Destremau), the latter two decidedly unruffled by their rivals tactics. Crepes Whaou ! continues to lead by a massive 631m over Jean Stalaven in the Open 50 multihull class.
WEATHER by Louis Bodin
ORMA Multihulls : NE trade winds are beginning to rotate to the ENE and will drop off gradually to 15 – 25 knots. The sea will also become flatter. For the Open 60 monohulls, no change in the weather as the 20 – 25 knot Trade winds from the North East are well established. The rest of the boats behind are all now well into the Trade winds and enjoying the 15 – 25 knot surfing conditions. Their aim is to pass the Canaries before Monday to avoid being caught in the low pressure system which is forming between Spain and the Canaries on Monday.
Official Rankings at 14:44:00 GMT
IMOCA Open 60 Class:
Pstn / Boat / Lat / Long / Hdg / DTF / DTL
1 Virbac-Paprec 18 21.80' N 25 59.40' W 19.5 199 2050.0 0.0
2 Sill et Veolia 18 44.80' N 25 59.00' W 19.3 202 2071.9 21.9
3 Bonduelle 20 20.68' N 25 01.32' W 19.8 209 2180.3 130.3
4 Ecover 20 47.24' N 25 11.76' W 20.0 210 2202.1 152.1
5 Skandia 21 08.48' N 24 12.72' W 18.4 210 2240.7 190.7
6 Pro-Form 21 39.52' N 24 06.68' W 19.5 211 2271.8 221.8
7 Roxy 25 25.08' N 20 36.12' W 13.9 198 2553.5 503.5
Open 50 Monohull Class 2 14:44:00 GMT:
Pstn / Boat / Lat / Long / Hdg / DTF / DTL
1 Gryphon Solo 29 41.60' N 20 00.44' W 15.0 188 2801.5 0.0
2 Vedettes de Bréhat 29 29.00' N 16 49.96' W 10.7 190 2860.2 58.6
3 Top 50 Guadeloupe 31 25.16' N 12 40.80' W 11.3 187 3066.9 265.3
4 Défi Vendéen 31 49.80' N 11 19.96' W 12.6 176 3124.5 323.0
5 Artforms 35 24.00' N 16 21.00' W 15.2 223 3189.5 388.0
6 Polarity Solo 35 37.32' N 16 52.76' W 10.8 211 3190.7 389.2
ORMA Open 60 Class 14:44:00 GMT:
Pstn / Boat / Lat / Long / Hdg / DTF / DTL
1 Banque Populaire 13 14.36' N 21 42.04' W 21.0 167 2810.3 0.0
2 Géant 14 30.52' N 22 22.92' W 22.1 175 2895.4 85.1
3 Gitana 11 16 24.72' N 19 42.64' W 26.0 200 2961.2 150.9
Open 50 Multihull Class 2 14:44:00 GMT:
Pstn / Boat / Lat / Long / Hdg / DTF / DTL
1 Crêpes Whaou ! 24 30.08' N 21 43.56' W 20.4 195 2478.7 0.0
2 Jean Stalaven 33 19.80' N 14 43.72' W 10.6 218 3109.7 631.0
Quotes from the Boats:
Monohulls:
Roland ‘Bilou’ Jourdain (Sill et Veolia): “Time flies here, partly because we are eating up the miles like there’s no tomorrow under spinnaker in impressive surfing conditions ; but also because all that gives us a lot of work to do up and down the boat. We prepare each sail change well in advance so we keep going as fast as we can, and we often need to both be on deck to helm and trim the sails. We may be spending our days at the helm, on routing, indextenance and boat speed but it’s all done in good humour. Ellen and I are both experienced in laugh-o-therapy, which tires us out less and our faces crease less than if we lapsed into tear-o-therapy !”
Mike Golding (Ecover) : “We’re bowling along making the best progress as possible, but with the rudder problem, it’s like trying to steer a rally car at high speed with no tread on the tyres. It’s just frustrating that we’ve done more than enough work but it’s not delivering the results. We were shocked at this morning’s poll after all the effort we put in overnight. On board we feel like we’re travelling a million miles an hour but our speed is down. We have to make bigger turns on the wheel to compensate and these adjustments act like a brake. The breeze will moderate and rotate which will force us on a higher course towards the Doldrums. It’ll be a fast transit, but going upwind now is an unknown to us with the rudder problem, we’re not sure how it will be.”
Brian Thompson: “We’re in good shape, working well together. In fact this morning at sunrise Will was just coming up on deck to take over the helm and right at that moment a flying fish appeared and hit me in the left eye, so it was lucky that Will was there to grab the helm! Especially in the heavy weather conditions, we’re not at all used to the boat so we’ve spent a lot of time trying sail combinations, which has cost us time in sail changes. It’s been full on from the start, wet the whole time, we’ve been pushing hard, not getting many breaks to recover physically or to fix things. In normal conditions here it would be more relaxed. It’s hard work handling the spinnaker at night, especially when the moon goes down between 3 and 6am, steering then is really difficult. But we haven’t wiped the boat out yet..”
Kip Stone (Artforms): “I was jarred from my meditations with a loud thunk and the tiller nearly ripped from my hands. The boat immediately slowed from the mid-teens to 10 knots and a giant rooster tail off the transom made it clear we'd hooked something on the leeward rudder. Unfortunately, with a building sea and the big spinnaker flying, it wasn't long before the compromised steerage forced the boat to round up out of control. A moment on our side was all it took for the flogging kite to shred. As I leaned over the side to cut the sail I got a clear view of the rudder and it became quite clear that a very big fish got by far the worst end of the deal. So, there you have it. A big fish story which, I'm very sorry to say, is all true.”
Ryan Finn (Polarity Solo): “The first 4/5 days in the gale we were still putting the boat together and not getting any weather as our Sat phone was blocked so the day before yesterday was the first day we could really start racing. We were going dead downwind with the jib pole out, thinking we’re way behind so let’s just enjoy the ride. Before now we’ve just been working on the boat, now the list is pretty much sorted we’re in a better rhythm, it’s actually more relaxed on board than it was before the race. Yesterday we put up a spinnaker donated to us from a 45ft cruising boat in new Orleans, which blew out just an hour ago in a 35 knot gust. We’ll have to take it a bit easier with the two old spi’s left, but I just don’t want to miss the parties in Brazil!”
International Media Relations:
Mary Ambler
Email: mary.ambler@xalt.co.uk
Mob: +44 (0)7887 643 583
Paris Tel: +33 (0)1 414 149 77 or 78
TV Media Relations:
Anne Millet
Email: millet-anne@wanadoo.fr
Race web site: www.jacques-vabre.com – click on the Union Jack flag to go to the English version
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