Passing Cape Finisterre caused a few minor injuries to quite a few boats. Clarisse Crémer had overcome this first difficult passage quite well. But it was the next night that things got worse. While she had left her large gennaker (the sail she uses downwind in light to medium winds) behind, which she knew she would have to use a few hours later, the end that kept the sail furled broke and the latter took place while the wind was still blowing strong.
“I tried to reel it in but I didn’t succeed,” says the skipper of L’Occitane en Provence in a video. She then spent several minutes trying to drop it onto the deck without furling it: “It’s the biggest sail on the boat. She ended up in the water. It measures 300 m², I was not able to bring it on board. I also lost all the listening that goes with it. I’m a little ashamed but it was my mast or my sail.” For his second Vendée Globe, this start to the race is not really ideal. “Apart from a few burns on my hands, I didn’t do anything to myself.”
Twenty-ninth, she knows that the next hours and days until the Canaries are going to be complicated since it was the sail adapted to this weather…
Related News :