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After twelve days of racing, the leading ULTIM multihulls are on the final straight line of their 7500-mile course across the Atlantic and are now sailing downwind towards the Northern Hemisphere close to a large exclusion zone along the North coast of Brazil. For the two sailors on Maxi Edmond de Rothschild, this final run is looking difficult, and particularly more so since this morning. As soon as they left Le Havre on 29th October, Charles Caudrelier and Erwan Israël encountered a series of technical problems. They had to sail a boat that was not at 100% of her potential and as a consequence adapt their race. This morning, a collision led to serious damage to the steering system. The sailors are going to have to cope with this major breakage all the way to the finish, which is still some 2000 miles away.

Renaud Courbon and François Champion have not been able to find a solution to replace their mast, boom and sails within time, in spite of all the support they have received and after the lamination work was carried out in record time to secure the boat. Consequently, they have been forced to announce their retirement from the race.

We’re trying to stay on the tack that will take us to the Cape Verde waypoint. We’re a long way from the Canaries, so shouldn’t be in the wind shadow. The trade winds are light to moderate. 17-18 knots for the moment. We’re under full mainsail, big gennaker, J2. We sleep when we feel the need. We don’t have a set pattern. We’re not going to get much wind until Cape Verde, so it’s more or less a straight line. We should still be in the lead at Cape Verde without losing many miles, but this is a sailing race, a technical sport, so we have to keep an eye on the gear.

At 0334hrs UTC, Fabien Delahaye and Corentin Douguet informed their shore team that they were back in the race, less than 24 hours after they arrived in Cascais, Portugal to carry out a pit stop to evaluate the structural damage to their Class40, Legallais. The pair benefitted from help from Portuguese skipper, António Fontes and his team. “Before arriving, we contacted António Fontes, who was the skipper of the VO65 Mirpuri in the Volvo Ocean Race and who is based in Cascais. He helped us a lot after we arrived. He got hold of the composites we needed, got in contact with the designers and the yard to discuss repairs and we found someone here to do the lamination work.”

Yesterday, the skippers on Legallais prepared the ground for an expert to work on the damaged rail on the yellow and black monohull. By yesterday evening, Fabien Delahaye and Corentin Douguet knew it was possible to set sail again. “We didn’t stay long in Cascais, which is good news. And the other competitors are waiting for us now as they are stuck in light airs,” joked Delahaye. 

Everything is going well. I shared the work with François during the night, so I got some sleep. The sea is flat calm and the sun is coming up.. There isn’t much wind, but it’s nice enough. We should stay with 15-20 knots of wind. The Doldrums are ahead of us. Along the Equator, there is a narrow band of wind between the Equator and the exclusion zone. We’re going to try to get through there, but it is going to take a lot of manoeuvres. If there was a miracle recipe for catching Banque Populaire, we’d be doing it. They are going well, but we remain motivated and are trimming well. We’re going to do all we can to get back up with them. The heat isn’t a problem, as these boats are fast and generate an apparent wind.  If we open the window, it is well ventilated and we’re spending a lot of time outside in any case. Today, there will be a lot of manoeuvres. As for our ETA, let’s just say some time between Sunday and Monday.  

After arriving in Vigo yesterday morning to repair their damaged mainsail, Yannick Bestaven and Julien Pulvé, aided by their shore team, carried out an inspection of their monohull, Maître CoQ. They had a nasty surprise as one of the structural bulkheads in the forward hold had broken, forcing them to announce their retirement from the Transat Jacques Vabre Normandie Le Havre.

Yannick Bestaven: “One of the structural bulkheads broke after the slamming we suffered  passing Ushant, where we recorded speeds of 25 knots at 70 degrees from the wind in 3-4m high waves. The boat really suffered. We have taken the difficult decision to retire from the Transat Jacques Vabre Normandie Le Havre. It’s very sad for us, but even with the best will in the world, repairing a bulkhead would take a lot of time and would only be a temporary repair. If we set off again, we would not be able to get the most out of Maître CoQ V. On top of that, looking at the charts, weather conditions on a northern route would be worse than those at the start, and via the South, the trade winds are not there. We will bring the boat safely back to La Rochelle when conditions allow us to do that and Maître CoQ V will then go into the yard. Our goal now is the Vendée Globe, so we need to look ahead to 2024.”

We’re pleased with the start of the race, as our position in the rankings is very flattering, even if it’s largely due to our position off to the West. I hope that things will work out for us. We don’t have the same ability as Charal to get the speed up, but hope to make the most of our westerly positioning. It’s going well with Justine (Mettraux). We know each other well. The first 24 hours of racing were tough and like everyone else, we had lots of little problems. I got really seasick. I hadn’t felt as bad as that for a long time. 

We just picked up some wind this morning. We were on the edge of an area of calms. The goal is to find the trade winds, but the weather pattern to the south is complicated and we’ll be dealing with that tonight. We’ve been looking at the situation for 3 days. There are routes through to the West, but the problem is they are very complicated with fronts and transition zones to deal with and for what gain? It looks like the fleet will head further south, so we’re looking at that. As long as there’s a way through to the West, it could be interesting, but it’s a game of poker. We just need 12-13 knots of wind when reaching to keep going and be up on our foils. We can get up to 17 knots, which is 5 less than downwind. In the past, it was twice as fast. Teamwork.net are doing really well and made some good tactical choices. As the sun comes up, we’re at 25-26 knots and have been above 30, which is close to the boat’s peak speeds.