Throughout the Vendée Globe, Tip & Shaft offers you deciphering the weather and trajectories of the 40 solitaires by Loïs Berrehar et Gaston Morvanrespectively 2nd and 3rd in the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec 2024, which take turns every other week. Gaston Morvan is in charge this Friday.
“Since this morning, Charlie Dalin entered the Pacific passing south of Tasmania, with a lead of around 200 miles over his two pursuers, Sébastien Simon and Yoann Richomme. Loïs had explained it well last week, it was by attacking in the first depression of the Indian, close to the ice zone, with Sébastien Simon, that he managed to make the break where the Yoann Richomme, Thomas Ruyant and others took a fairly northerly route. The gain was not enormous, but since this episode, Charlie has had rather success with him, in the sense that he often starts from the front, he manages to place himself at the front of the small dorsals which are installed on the road, he manages to avoid the bullets. Since the start of the race, he has never stopped too much.
For now, we can say that he is the bosshe makes good trajectories, is always regular, it’s clean, fluid, he is committed and takes risks when necessary and conversely, he knows how to preserve his boat when the conditions require it. I saw his video this morning, shaved, smiling from ear to ear, he doesn’t seem to have any dark circles, It’s hard to make a face lie, it seems in great shapeI even said to myself that he seemed to have left yesterday! This is less the case for others who appear more tired.
The fact of being in front of him therefore made it possible to little by little outpace Seb Simon – even if the gap is not huge – which was also handicapped by the loss of its starboard foil, even if, for the moment, it is not yet too penalizing. Now, it must be a little hard psychologically for Sébastien, because until now, he was in a state of mind and in the position to play for victory, now, he is well aware that it will be hard to win the Vendée Globe. Because if on the tailwind, the loss of its foil is not a big disadvantage – we see that it manages to keep a good speed -, in reaching situations, at the front of a front on flat seas and in 20-25 knots of wind, a situation which will unfortunately arise for him, he risks losing a lot by no longer being able to support himself on his broken foil. Perhaps this will push him to take more risks in terms of strategy, especially since the game still seems quite open until the Horn.
Behind, we can expect a very big break between the third, Yoann Richomme, and his pursuers. Yoann is a bit on the razor’s edge, but I think he will manage not to get sucked in too much by the backbone that we see swelling this weekend behind him, he should pass between the drops and stay in the same system as Charlie and Seb.
The situation should even be favorable to it in the middle of next week, the routing above shows thatit could come within about 60 miles of Charliecompared to 250 today. The reason? This is because the latter will have to do more of the route, with a lot of gybes, where Yoann will arrive from behind with a more favorable weather system and a more direct route.
Inversely, Thomas Ruyant cannot get through and will find himself blocked in the ridge over the next few days. He must now wait for the next front to arrive, which promises to be very strong, but he will undoubtedly be caught by Jérémie Beyou and Nico Lunven, or even the group of three behind, with Sam Goodchild, Paul Meilhat and Yannick Bestaven. It will do a great match in perspective within this pack of six boats.
At the rear of the fleet also, there is of the match and the strategic game, particularly in the drift boat peloton – even if there are a few foilers in the pile – with different options, between Tanguy Le Turquais and Louis Duc to the south, Jean Le Cam to the north and Benjamin Ferré in a somewhat intermediate position. We see that Jean tried to escape depression by extending the road to the north and in the end, he is doing well. On my routings (see above), I have the impression that the routes will converge in the coming days. Jean won’t have too many choices other than going down towards the ice zone, but he will manage to do it on one side in a fairly moderate wind, passable conditions which will allow him to achieve good averages, so that Tanguy will go slower because he will have to jibe along the ice zone in strong winds.
I see an advance from Jean, at the moment when they will find themselves towards the ice zone, probably Tuesday, of the order of 150-200 miles ahead of Benjamin and Tanguywho is also handicapped by technical problems, we saw him in particular with his “mule” (small front sail) unusable and his J2 which he had to repair, it is handicapping for the downwind in wind strong.
Jean runs his business well, he doesn’t seem to have any technical problems, we also see that his boat goes very fast compared to other Imoca with finsit is often at more than 20 knots, speeds that its competitors have more difficulty achieving. Which is logical, insofar as there is around fifteen years of gap between its Reason plan and the others. When you see how the performances of the Class40s have evolved over the last five years with the new hulls, you find the same phenomenon for the IMOCAs with daggerboards. Now, the fight in this whole pack will continue, it is as interesting to follow as that of the leading boats.
Regarding damage, we see that the most affected, whether in front or behind, are those who chose the roads most engaged in the Indian – Seb Simon, Tanguy Le Turquais, Guirec Soudée, Antoine Cornic… The experience of Jean Le Cam, who chooses to preserve his boat, is necessarily an asset compared to rookies. And a scrapyard in the South Seas quickly becomes a big issue to managethe images of Tanguy climbing the mast to repair his J2 show it, it’s a mission!
You will tell me that Charlie is the perfect counter-example, because he is the one who attacked the most in the Indian and for the moment, he is doing well, but it must be emphasized that he has much more experience of the Imoca, he has already done the Vendée Globe and above all, he has a big team behind. For the moment we see that skippers who have big teams and the budgets that go with them have few big problems. To be confirmed in the coming weeks!”
