Friday 5th December 2008
“YOU HAVE TO MAKE GAINS EVERYWHERE AND NOT LOSE OUT ANYWHERE”
- Don’t change a winning recipe!
- Zone of high pressure to round
- Life in black and white
- The ‘thick of it’ soon
The Top 10 since Wednesday 3rd December for Michel Desjoyeaux on his 60 foot
monohull FONCIA. There’s nothing to add to that other than the fact that
Michel has made up his deficit at the end of his Atlantic descent, and has
made it back to the front of the fleet in this Vendée Globe. Of course this
Vendée Globe began with two more days already on the clock than his rivals:
“a detail” which shouldn’t ever be forgotten. And the results speak for
themselves: 171.8 mile deficit on the leader this Friday 5th December, which
is nothing on the scale of a circumnavigation of the globe. The skipper can
be proud of his performance, even though he’s not the type to strut about.
For us landlubbers the figures detailing this comeback will be on paper but
for the sailor, these moments of high intensity will be etched in his
memory. Right now, another race has begun. Another, because he’s using the
same weather charts as his friends at the top of the ranking now. Here, the
systems are identical and everyone is in the same playing field, which is
something that Michel relishes. You can sense it. FONCIA is well, and her
skipper too. His voice is clear and incisive after clawing back a deficit of
close to 500 miles on the head of the race since 15th November.
Fearless!
His night message quivered like a sheet: “Peak record boat speed with 30.44
knots on the GPS”. In short this amounts to over 56 km/hr single-handed
under sail, in hostile seas aboard a boat still loaded up with 60 days’
worth of supplies. It is worth adding that the skipper’s not even
frightened. Michel confirms the time initially and then quickly dumbs down
the performance: “30.44 knots… That’s the real thing, it’s on the GPS.
There’s nothing exceptional about it… We’ll be going faster than that soon.
It was the start of the low; I had a lot of sail aloft. After the boat
buried twice, I saw that she was holding, so I decided to reduce the sail
and it was more relaxed with two reefs in the staysail. As a result I was
able to the make the most of that to get some good sleep. The low went
through fairly fast and it wasn’t very strong. I didn’t have any more than
40 knots of breeze. The seas were fairly short though. The waves were high
and it was possible to catch them up and dig into them. If you wanted to go
fast, you had to luff up and go diagonally. This wasn’t really awkward in
relation to the course I wanted so that’s what I did. That enabled me to
make 2 knots more boat speed than the others, which is another bit of good
news! This morning I’m 45 miles behind PRB in terms of actual distance. I
don’t think I‘ve ever been so close… other than at the start! (laughs)”… To
make the optimum headway, or be on top of things as he likes to say,
controlling the trim and refining the trajectories is all part of daily life
aboard, which he combines with the waves, wind, weather and strategy. “I’ll
have to stick with the same well-tried methods of sailing: a certain
autonomy whilst watching what the others are up to. The fact that I have
boats around me shouldn’t make me any less inclined to hoist more sail aloft
and control the boat’s power. We’re working on making small gains. You have
to make gains everywhere and lose nothing anywhere. We all make errors; the
goal is to make fewer errors than those who are ahead”.
Close-hauled in the south…
Listening to the boat powering along, it’s clear she’s on a rather unusual
point of sail for traversing the southern ocean, as Michel explains: “The
small low we had yesterday has evacuated to the E/SE, leaving the way clear
for a zone of high pressure which is in front of us. We’re trying to get
around it so as we can hunt down the next low. This anticyclone is
evacuating eastwards and we’ll be off on the conveyor belt once more. Right
now the road ahead is blocked so there’s nothing for it but to ease off the
pace and go around it. All of a sudden we’ve got back into chasing the dahu
(an imaginary animal which gullible people are lured into chasing) and are
heeled over once more, which is a little less amusing… After this stretch,
we’ll hit some W/NW’ly which will propel us halfway to the next gate. We’re
getting the odd clout, the effects of which soon pass. The one we had
yesterday produced a maximum of 40 knots of breeze as we skirted round it.
It was easy…” And though Michel is surprised not to have seen Sébastien
Josse (BT) and Loïck Peyron (Gitana Eighty) adopt a S’ly course like
Jean-Pierre Dick, he concludes: “Virbac will scram but he’ll be back.
There’s no point getting worked up about it. We’ll make it back with him as
he in turn falls into a larger zone of high pressure…” To be continued…
Fright in black and white…
There’s been a change in the ranking but also a change of universe for
FONCIA, which is entering into the grand swirl of lows that gravitate around
the Antarctic. This universe has switched from blue to grey, from the
laughing gulls to the albatross, from 25°C a few days ago to an ambient 8°C.
“I had memories of the light and shade. It’s what I referred to at the time
as the land of shadows, as you see virtually no sunshine. Here, everything
is grey. Following on from that you play in the grey nuances: it’s a little
grey, very grey, or rather a grey white fog... Now, you are in this
atmosphere, your experience of it is black and white”. The air temperature
is 8°C, and the water temperature is virtually identical. Michel has also
welcomed his first albatross and the ‘local gulls’ as he says. “It’s nice!”
which is something that cannot be said about the little fright he had this
Friday morning: “I was in the cockpit and I saw a strange thing in the
water… A big eddy…. I looked at it again and I saw a black back coming
towards me. The creature was 30 metres from me, heading straight towards the
aft of the boat. I said to myself, that’s it: it’s going to break my rudder!
And then hup, it plunged beneath the water and I never saw it again. It
didn’t just measure a few metres in length, it was a big 15/ 20 metre
creature… Enormous… !” And that is where the conversation with Michel ends
with “nothing out of the ordinary for the time being”. For those of us
onshore though, there is something magical happening in this austral
universe which is playing host to a full-on race around the planet.
Quotes from Michel:
Sébastien Josse… “He’s sailing well. He’s sailing cleanly and rather calmly.
He’s never in the high scores but having good average speeds is more
important: he is still in front. He has a reasonable speed and he’s often in
the right place. That’s a good recipe!”
Like a piece of Turkish delight… “The bunk? I haven’t slept in it at all
since the start. At the beginning of the Atlantic, I slept on my pouffe in
the cockpit, now I sleep in my seat. Outside it’s beginning to get cold… I
sleep a little when I can, it’s fairly variable. I tidy up a little and do a
bit of cleaning. I check the boat… I haven’t yet read any books. There is
lots of food, so I’m making the most of it. I think I’ll return looking like
a piece of a Turkish delight… Life is good aboard FONCIA!”
Thank you hood… “With the hood, I can move about and still reindex protected
from the water, the wind and the cold. Helming in these conditions though
doesn’t serve much purpose. It’s better to let the pilot do the steering.
There’s no point helming… It’s under spinnaker where it’s worthwhile
optimising the trajectories and the boat speed.”
Choices… “I haven’t shaved yet. I’m hesitating between having a shave and
getting the boat making headway. (laughs)”
Ranking on 5th December at 1550 hours
1 - Peyron Loïck (Gitana Eighty) 17628.2 miles from the finish
2 - Josse Sébastien (BT) 44.9 miles from the leader
3 - Eliès Yann (Generali) 58.2
4 - Le Cléac’h Armel (Brit Air) 68
5 - Dick Jean-Pierre (Paprec-Virbac 2) 87.8
10th - Desjoyeaux Michel (Foncia) 171.8 miles
Translated by Kate Jennings – Expression
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