They left Les Sables d'Olonne on Sunday November 10 to travel around the world. After 67 days of racing, the sailors are tired but the boats are suffering and on the way back to Vendée, breakages appear. The first of the day, it was Jean Le Cam who broke his J2 forestay (cable which holds the mast at the front) as Paul Meilhat did on Wednesday. “It’s a really surprising situation,” said the skipper of Tout commence en Finistère – Armor Lux.
4,500 miles from the finish line, Le Cam embarked on a tedious repair. The sail which is associated with this stay, the J2 (main sail which allows sailing upwind) made it possible to hold the mast when the stay broke thanks to the lashings at the top and bottom of the mast. The idea of rolling it up perfectly to stay in place and avoid unnecessary tension.
The Cam decided to install two other sails, the J3 (breeze sail) and the FRO (small headsail) which secures the mast. The Finistère remains in the race. He will no longer be able to fight with the same weapons on the way up the Atlantic. Its objective is to favor a trajectory in the best possible conditions, in order to reach Les Sables d'Olonne.
Collision with an Oani for Boris Herrmann
A few hours later, it was the German skipper Boris Herrmann who announced that he had broken his port foil after a collision with an Oani (Unidentified Object or Animal) during the night from Wednesday to Thursday at 3:31 a.m. accumulated on Malizia Seaexplorer which had already experienced sail problems. While sailing at more than 13 knots off the coast of Brazil, the foiler hit his foil: the skipper is fine and the boat can continue its route but obviously in degraded mode. After consulting his team, the skipper is seeing if it is possible to retract and secure the foil. If this is not the case, he could cut it to preserve his boat, a complex and time-consuming operation, which Thomas Ruyant carried out four years ago. “It’s another difficult day. But it could always be worse. The boat is safe, I am unhurt, and we continue.” Pointed in tenth position, he wants to finish his lap even though he is 2,700 miles from the finish line.
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