“I’m a little ashamed”, the tile for Clarisse Crémer who loses her main sail in the ocean

Clarisse Crémer is this Wednesday morning after three nights at sea in 29th place in the Vendée Globe dominated by Yoann Richomme (Paprec Arkéa) since this Wednesday. The navigator, who admitted “not having slept very well” during the night from Monday to Tuesday nor “very well sailed” since leaving Sunday from Les Sables d'Olonne, had the unpleasant surprise of losing an important sail, her large MH0 gennaker last night, around 4 a.m. A loss which risks weighing on the performances of the 34-year-old Parisian in the days and weeks to come.

She recounted the circumstances of this incident in a video: “A piece holding her has broken. It happened while I was under another sail and it made a huge knot. Hell what… I couldn't roll it back, I tried to drop it into the boat without rolling it. It’s the biggest sail on the boat.”she explained, wedged inside her Imoca L'Occitane.

An annoying loss also on an environmental level

In addition to being a real handicap downwind in light airs, this tile upset the Parisian concerned about the environmental impact: “The sail ended up in the water with the sheets and lots of things, it’s a double whammy. This is clearly not the mark I want to leave in the ocean. I'm a little ashamed, I admit, but I had no choice. It was my mast or my sail, which is 300 m2…”

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With morale affected, Clarisse Crémer also took stock of her race. “It’s not joy. I was sailing carefully, I wasn't super proud of myself these last few days but I had the impression of getting into a real Vendée Globe rhythm, quite calm even if I wanted to be a little faster. I felt the confidence coming, well the confidence, we'll talk about that later. What hell, it was horrible, I spent an hour and a half horrible, she detailed, finding the words to summarize this very physical episode which she now wishes to put aside. : “Imagine, it's an episode of CrossFit with a math problem while you're leaning over the boat, just hanging on by the harness. A mix of semi-secure climbing. But apart from a few burns on my hands, I didn't do anything else to myself.»