“These last few days, I find it hard”, watch out for icebergs and point Nemo for Violette Dorange

IThere is a certain incongruity in reaching the point on the planet furthest from any civilization, at 52^e day of a solo race, and not to find yourself there alone. Youngest in the Vendée Globe flotilla, Violette Dorange overtook on the night of the 1^is January, Point Nemo, the most isolated place on the globe, in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, where “even the astronauts on the International Space Station are closer to inhabited land than us”as she puts it. But, paradoxically, “this is almost the place in the race where I met the most competitors”relates the 23-year-old skipper, contacted by telephone. Funny New Year.

Incorporated into the heart of a small peloton of grouped competitors – its Imoca (18 meter monohull) Become occupies 25^e place, at the 7 a.m. ranking, Friday January 3 -, the youngest participant in the history of this solo sailing trip around the world, without assistance or stopover, saw the sails of certain competitors, starting with those of Louis Duc (Fives Group – Lantana Environment), who is hot on her heels. And Violette Dorange is far from getting annoyed by this improbable proximity, because the skippers of the 10^e edition of the Vendée Globe are not the only ones to cross paths in the cold waters of the South Pacific. “We had an iceberg alert”whispers the navigator.

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