a quartet emerges off the Cape of Good Hope… Follow the position of the skippers live

After a depression which took them as far as the Cape of Good Hope, an anticyclone allowed the skippers at the head of the race to breathe a little.

“A little respite, it’s not unpleasant!”breathes Nicolas Lunven (Holcim-PRB). After several days during which the skippers at the head of the Vendée Globe were carried by a depression to race at full speed towards the Cape of Good Hope, an anticyclone slowed down the pace of the competitors a little. At the 7 a.m. check-in, Friday November 29, Charlie Dalin (Macif), in the lead, saw three pursuers coming back on his heels.

The leading quartet now stands 35 nautical miles (around 65 kilometers) off the Cape of Good Hope, where Charlie Dalin, Thomas Ruyant (Vulnerable), Yoann Richomme (Paprec-Arkéa) and Sébastien Simon (Groupe Dubreuil) will pass in the morning of Friday. Emerging from the depression, the skippers face an anticyclone which forces them to maneuver to find the wind, and the route is no longer as straight. But these conditions delight Sébastien Simon. “Everything is going well on board, it has calmed down a lot, I have twenty knots of wind, on relatively calm seas, the boat is sliding, these are really easy conditions and it feels a lot of good”he says on the race website.

These four leading men relegated the fifth, Nicolas Lunven, to 159 nautical miles, but the skipper of Holcim-PRB is not worried. “Conditions are a little more livable than the last four to five days. Being stuck all the time isn’t fun all the time. Enjoying rather cool conditions for two days will allow you to rest, eat well, take a good tour of the boat and repair the few little things lying around.”he explains.

The second platoon of the fleet, made up of daggerboard boats, is still heading down the Atlantic and these skippers should pass the Cape of Good Hope on Wednesday, five days after the lead.