At the start of the week, Charlie Dalin confessed. The boss of the fleet for a month admitted, on camera, that he had experienced sailing problems in New Zealand. Which made him lose ground for 36 hours. After having repaired, Le Havre insisted above all on this: “You hear correctly, I am once again at 100% of the boat’s potential”. A message addressed to his two direct adversaries, Yoann Richomme and Sébastien Simon, who, in turn, had taken the controls from him.
A way of telling them: “Hey guys, if you overtook me, it’s only because I had a problem with a sail!” »
Information travels quickly…
In the story, we also note that Dalin did not specify which sail it was, nor the nature of the problem encountered. “In my time, this information would not have gotten out of the boat,” says Michel Desjoyeaux. We must understand that in offshore racing and especially in the Vendée Globe, where the competitors are hyper-connected, every piece of information that a single-handed sailor communicates on land will very quickly reach the ears of his adversaries,” adds the two-time winner of the Vendée. Globe, whose philosophy during the race was as follows: “We can possibly say that we are encountering problems, without specifying which ones”.
It is easy to understand that no sailor wants to show his weaknesses to his adversaries. When a serious technical problem arises on board, the solo sailor has the right to ask for help from his team on land. This is where we enter assistance authorized by the race regulations.
“In 2000, Ellen was chirping! »
When the problems rear their heads, we noticed that the communication of loners varied a lot. There are those who talk about all the problems on board but never say when they were able to solve them. Those who only speak when they have repaired, like Dalin. “It’s a process that we put in place after The Transat CIC: we communicate when the problem is resolved,” notes Marie-Astrid Parandeau-Gautier, communications manager for Imoca Macif.
There are, of course, those who never say anything and, finally, those who chirp. Desjoyeaux remembers very well the communication from Ellen MacArthur which made her life difficult in 2000. “She always said when she broke something but never when she had repaired it. At one point, I said to myself that it wasn’t possible for her to go so fast when she had broken a lot. So, I understood that she was flirting and I stopped caring about her communication.”
When a technical glitch is definitely no longer repairable at sea, as was the case with Sébastien Simon’s broken starboard foil, the secret comes out quite quickly. What’s the point of hiding what everyone will be able to see at some point.
Communication Yes Yes
Thanks (or because?) to the mapping updated six times a day, each skipper is constantly monitored, the slightest suspicious trajectory is questioned on social networks. “We still have the right not to say everything,” defends Dalin’s press secretary.
Except that there are speeds that betray secrets… Last December 8, during three 30′ segments, everyone saw that Charlie Dalin was at 6-7 knots, where he should have been moving at 20 knots . His direct opponents also noticed this abnormal appearance. Observers on land as well. “All modern tools can be used for communication to influence your competitors. You can also do communication Yes Yes, crying all the time about your problems, it’s a way of putting your opponents to sleep. But it’s all still a game.”
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