Portrait of two champions:Charlie Dalin is 40 years old. He was 6 years old when he took his first tacks on Optimist. Since then, he has always oriented his life choices towards navigation. He chose to study naval architecture at the renowned University of Southampton, allowing him to combine the dual skills of sailor and sailboat technician. His attraction to offshore racing took him to the Mini 6.50, Class40 and then IMOCA circuits. He assiduously practiced the Solitaire du Figaro, the best offshore regatta school, for which he reached the podium every year from 2014 to 2018. He was the first to cross the finish line of the previous Vendée Globe but left his place as winner went to Yannick Bestaven who benefited from time compensation for having rescued a shipwrecked competitor.
Yoann Richomme is also 40 years old and has also been sailing since his childhood. He also graduated from a school specializing in maritime engineering (École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne). He took the Mini Transat springboard before racing on Class40 and winning the Solitaire du Figaro twice in 2016 and 2019. This is his first participation in the Vendée globe.
These two champions were not favorites by chance. However, the winners of previous editions had quite similar profiles and they were just as predetermined and determined. Long live the experience.Sailboats designed for the feat:The overall aerodynamics of the boats, the design of the sails and masts, result in ever greater efficiency in terms of speed and stability. As proof, the record for distance traveled in 24 hours was significantly improved several times during this world tour. If hulls are always better suited to reaching high speeds in various sea conditions, if materials are progressing and ensuring lighter and more rigid structures, it is above all the new foils that make the difference. Those of 2024 benefit from more resistant materials and more efficient shapes to optimize lift and limit drag. For their part, the autopilot and speed management systems are more sophisticated and more reliable. Long live the experience.The weather, the arbiter of the oceans:To improve the record, you need the best men, the best boats, and a little luck with the weather. We do not choose it since the departure date is fixed. The descent of the North Atlantic, from Les Sables d'Olonne to the Equator, was not particularly rapid. It's the fault of the Azores anticyclone. After a lack of wind in the Bay of Biscay, after a fairly rapid descent into the Portuguese trade winds, the skippers suffered from a very extensive anticyclone forming a barrier between the latitudes of the Canary Islands and Cape Verde. They then suffered from too weak a trade wind and a Doldrums which did not do any good. Charlie Dalin took almost two days longer than his time recorded in the previous edition. This is a bad start for a record!
The crossing of the South Atlantic was rather beneficial thanks to a Saint Helena anticyclone which did not prove too intrusive and a good concomitance with the arrival of a depression on the great treadmill of the roaring forties. Charlie Dalin's delay in the best time rounding the Cape of Good Hope has been reduced to a day and a few hours.
At Cape Leeuwin, Charlie Dalin and Yoann Richomme are only 6 hours behind Armel Le Cleach, the defending champion in 2017. At Cape Horn, they will be 4 and a half days ahead. It is therefore in the Pacific that the enormous difference was made. Overall, the conditions were neither worse nor better, but the performance of the boats allowed an astonishing consistency of very high average speeds, in particular those of Yoann's boat. Charlie, for his part, distinguished himself by an extremely precise option in the weather to pass on a more tense route, close to a low pressure center. Both swallowed the Pacific in a time of 14 days and 9 hours which will go down in history.
The ascent of the Atlantic was carried out without incident, painfully as usual, with a succession of anticyclonic calms, stormy weather in depressions whose movement was difficult to predict, poorly established trade winds… Lots of vagaries which translate into a time of 12 days and 5 hours for Charlie Dalin. Boris Hermann took 11 hours less four years ago.
Finally, we have to thank the weather for the return to the North Atlantic. A discreet doldrums, a reasonable trade wind, an absent anticyclone and just a gentle ridge to ensure the transition between the northeast and south winds, brought by a distant depression. These southerly winds were generous just enough for the two leaders to move very quickly towards Brittany. The only downside was the good anticyclonic weather that the spectators ordered for the finish, nice cool weather which resulted in weak wind and a little too much on the axis of the road for the final sprint. As a result, the travel time of 8 days on this section improves by 3 days the previous record held by… Charlie Dalin, 4 years earlier. Needless to say, he knows the way.
In conclusion, we can estimate that the infallibility of the skippers and the excellent performance of the boats made it possible to make the most of the weather conditions which were distributed with rather poor charts during the descent of the North Atlantic, quite standardized. in the southern hemisphere, and really generous for the rise of the North Atlantic. It was necessary to reward the most valiant skippers. Find all the weather forecasts on METEO CONSULT Marine and follow all the news from the Vendée Globe in our special file.
