Press Release No. 20
Friday 25th November, 2005
www.jacques-vabre.com
TRANSAT JACQUES VABRE 05: GRYPHON SOLO BIG WINNERS OF ‘LITTLE’ OPEN 50 MONOHULL CLASS
• ETAs: The current ETA for the 2nd and 3rd placed monohulls, Artforms and Vedettes de Bréhat is for Friday evening.
• Brazil Media Centre: The fixed telephone line for all media enquiries 24/7 is: 00 55 71 3319 3435. Please call this number in the first instance to reach me.
• You can Skype me! I will be on Skype out in Brazil (Search for MaryAmbler1973) when working if conversation is needed.
Images of Gryphon Solo's arrival into Bahia are available to download in low resolution from the TJV web site image gallery. Please credit Yvan Zedda.
OPEN 50 MONOHULL CLASS
To the sound of African drum beats permeating the pitch black Brazilian night, the Anglo-American team of Joe Harris and Josh Hall won the Open 50 Monohull Class in the Transat Jacques Vabre 2005 when they crossed the finish line at 2005 local time (23:05:45 GMT) after 19 days, 9 hours 5 minutes and 45 seconds racing at sea. They haven't broken the course record set by Alex Bennett and Paul Larsen in 2001, but they have sailed a terrific race...read on for the first reactions from the skippers after stepping onto the pontoon.
Big winners of the ‘little’ Open 50 class, American Joe Harris and Brit Josh Hall, on board their Finot design Gryphon Solo, complete the plateau of winning teams across the 4 classes in the 2005 Transat Jacques Vabre 2005, following Crêpes Whaou! (Multi Open 50), Virbac-Paprec (IMOCA Mono Open 60), and Banque Populaire (ORMA Multi Open 60). “It was incredible! We pushed the boat to her full potential, it’s an amazing feeling to have won the Jacques Vabre race!” an elated Joe Harris exclaimed after stepping onto the pontoon.
The Anglo-American pair on Gryphon Solo had the good grace to arrive into Salvador at the start of the Crew Party being held at the CENAB marina waterfront. As the boat was manoeuvred alongside the pontoon, an 8 strong Brazilian drum band were beating out the samba and fireworks were let off to herald the arrival of these last winners. All the partygoers whooped and cheered as Josh and Joe let off the champagne corks and hugged each other, grins as wide as Cheshire cats, and clearly overjoyed at coming first after what was a very tough race for all the fleet, them no less.
Joe revealed that they didn’t escape their share of misfortune. “Just a day into the race I had a bad fall, my ribs were badly bruised, I had no idea if they were broken, and I needed to lie down but the boat was crashing up and down on each wave, and I couldn’t get comfortable. I took lots of medication for the pain, but couldn’t even grind a winch for 3 days. We thought we might have to retire but Josh just said, ‘can you breath?’ and I said yes, so he said, okay we’ll keep going – some doctor he is!”
Gryphon Solo took the lead on the 7th November at 1800 GMT and held it all the way to the finish. Their greatest rival was their fellow Anglo-American team of Kip Stone and Merf Owen on Artforms, who made a pitstop in Lorient to replace their torn indexsail. “At that stage in the race, we didn’t relax one minute,” Josh takes up the story. “e had no idea if Kip & Merf would set out again or when, and any lead we could get would be crucial. So from then, we decided we had to switch our focus to covering Vedettes de Bréhat, but that resulted in us getting stuck in the same ‘bubble’ of light airs as we didn’t want to separate from them too much. However, Artforms came back from the West and became a real threat again, and at that point we wished we’d been 100 miles further over to the West, although we did then pull out a 100+ mile lead over Vedettes, I reckon we could have been in at least the same time as Roxy. This boat looked after us so well, she gave us hardly any problems, we really opened her up and had some incredible days’ sailing. She sails like an Open 60, but she’s much easier on my old bones, the sails aren’t so big! Hey, Mike (Ed: Golding), you should try sailing an Open 50, much easier on the back!”
Born into a family of offshore sailors, this ex-fisherman and naval boat builder has won his first transatlantic victory, as has the experienced British solo circumnavigator Josh Hall, who has entered the Transat Jacques Vabre 3 times (abandoned in 1997, 7th in 1999). They managed to end up with a lead of over 200 miles from their nearest adversary, Artforms, who at the 1900 GMT position report was 208m behind, battling for second place with Vedettes de Bréhat (De Broc / S. Escoffier) just 21 miles behind. These two boats are expected to arrive on Friday night, along with the last Open 60 Monohull Galileo (Antunes / Coldefy).
Open 50 Monohull Class 2:
1st - Gryphon Solo (J. Harris / J. Hall) at 23:05:45 GMT after 19 days, 9 hours, 5 mins 45 seconds at an average boatspeed on theoretical route of 4,340m: 9.33 knots
THE FOUR WINNING TEAMS IN THE 2005 TRANSAT JACQUES VABRE :
Open 60 Multihull: Pascal Bidégorry and Lionel Lemonchois (Banque Populaire)
Open 60 Monohull: Jean-Pierre Dick and Loïck Peyron (Virbac-Paprec)
Open 50 Multihull: Franck-Yves and Kevin Escoffier (Crêpes Whaou !)
Open 50 Monohull: Joe Harris eand Josh Hall (Gryphon Solo)
OPEN 50 Positions at 1900 GMT 24th November
Pstn / Boat / Lat / Long / Hdg / DTF / DTL
2 Artforms 10 18.84' S 35 32.00' W 13.1 220 244.1 208.9
3 Vedettes de Bréhat 9 55.04' S 35 26.12' W 12.7 213 265.2 230.0
4 Top 50 Guadeloupe 0 19.76' S 30 59.76' W 8.7 205 896.3 861.1
5 Polarity Solo 0 28.96' N 31 15.28' W 8.0 209 935.1 899.9
International Media Relations:
Mary Ambler
Email: mary.ambler@xalt.co.uk
Mob: +44 (0)7887 643 583
Brazilian Direct Line: 00 55 71 3319 3435
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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