Akena Véranda démâte, Macif prend les commandes
Si Aquarelle.com et Actual s’installent et persistent au classement général dans leur classe, malheureusement Akena Vérandas s’immobilise sur l’Atlantique, suite à son démâtage. Dans la catégorie IMOCA, Macif prend les commandes mais un petit groupe mené par Groupe Bel semble en mesure de chambouler le classem! ent.
Après les 3 abandons d’hier, Monopticien.com, Lecoq Cuisine et Comiris Pôle Santé Elior, la nuit n’a pas été favorable à Arnaud Boissières et Gérald Veinard sur Akéna Vérandas. En effet, les deux hommes sont contraints à l’abandon suite au démâtage de leur bateau. Tout va bien à bord, la coque n’est pas endommagée, mais le moral a pris un sérieux coup.
L’aventure continue cependant pour les 32 équipages encore en course et cette deuxième nuit a été marquée par l’arrivée du froid. Si les conditions se sont calmées, 5 à 20 nœuds de vent, la mer reste menaçante et désordonné! e.
Class40
Toujours bien accrochés à la première place, Yannick Bestaven et Eric Drouglazet sur Aquarelle.com savourent pleinement cette entame de course. C’est au milieu de la nuit que le tandem a enfin viré pour gagner le sud. Toujours assez étirée, la flotte évolue dans l’ouest de la pointe bretonne dans un flux d’ouest nord-ouest sur une mer hachée mais dans un froid glacial. Deux groupes se distinguent dans cette classe, à l’ouest, Aquarelle.com et à l’est, ERDF et des Pieds et des mains et 11th Hour Racing.
Muti50
Positionné à la latitude de Saint-Na! zaire, Actual, leader de la classe des Multi50 continue de dérouler sur une route au 211°. Crêpes Whaou ! navigue un peu moins de 7 milles derrière mais une sérieuse bagarre se profile pour Prince de Bretagne de Lionel Lemonchois et Maître Jacques des deux Loïc. De son côté, FenetreA Cardinal, ferme la marche à 140 milles de la tête de course.
IMOCA
C’est un jeu de chaises musicales que sont en train d’entamer les trois premiers de la flotte des IMOCA. Après Virbac Paprec 3, c’est au tour de Macif de prendre les commandes. PRB, toujours dans ce trio, joue quant à lui, au jeu du chat et de la souris avec Jean Pierre Dick sur Virbac Paprec 3. Les deux concurrents naviguent à vue. Ma! lheureusement, la nuit a été fatale à Arnaud Boissières et Gérald Veinard sur Akena Vérandas. Ce démâtage vient mettre un terme à leur aventure. Si la coque n’a pas trop souffert de cet accident, le moral des deux hommes est au plus bas. L’arrivée des premières lueurs du jour vont permettre de mettre de l’ordre sur le pont et d’établir, ou non, un gréement de fortune avant de mettre le cap à l’est.
De son côté, Groupe Bel et Banque Populaire, les deux IMOCA les plus à l’est de la flotte pourraient bien venir chambouler l’ordre établi. Affaire à suivre.
Ils ont dit
Yannick Bestaven, Aquarelle.com :
« On a viré de bord en milieu de nuit. C’est un peu plus confortable, mais ce flux de nord apporte de l’air très froid. L’avantage c’est que l’humidité a disparu. Nous sommes en forme, nous dormons bien et la descente est pour le moment paisible. Je pense que nous sommes bien positionnés par rapport à nos petits camarades. Nous naviguons à vue avec Concise 2, nous avons même aperçu ses feux dans la nuit. »
Yves Le Blevec, Actual :
« C’est vraiment ce que nous attendions. Je crois que nous sommes le plus sud des M! ulti50 mais ici ça bouge encore beaucoup et il fait super froid.. La nuit a été plus calme que prévue avec un vent variable de 5 à 20 nœuds, mais nous restons très prudents. »
Vincent Riou, PRB :
« Ce n’est pas la gloire ici, il n’y a pas de vent, ce n’est pas marrant. L’équipage est en forme, nous n’avons pas encore tiré sur les réserves mais les prochains jours ça devrait se compliquer un petit peu. Nous naviguons collés serrés avec Jean-Pierre mais la stratégie pour le moment n’est pas encore très claire. Il faut travailler, nous n’avons pas le temps d’avoir froid. »
Arnaud Bo! issières, Akena Vérandas :
« Nous avons perdu le mât et les voiles, il ne reste plus que la bôme, un deckspreader, et un bout de 1 mètre de tube. C ‘est dommage le début de course était sympa. Aucun de nous n’est blessé à part dans notre amour propre. Nous pensons que le bout de bastaque a cassé en sortie de winch, ou le tirant inferieur du deckspreader. Puis il y a eu des très gros crack, comme si nous étions rentrés à dix nœuds dans une falaise. Mais c’est bien le mât qui s’est cassé en plusieurs morceaux. Ensuite nous avons bataillé une heure pour tout dégager…mais vous connaisser la suite.»
Macif @ A.Courcoux
With the first 24 hours of fast racing in their Transat Jacques Vabre despatched to their streaming wakes, the rhythm and the pace in each of the three classes is firmly established. And while the high speeds of the first night and early morning reduced slightly with the abating breeze, so the early realities start to hit home.
Pre-start hopes and expectations may be one thing, but after the first day the cream has inexorably risen in each division, Multi 50, IMOCA Open 60 and Class 40. Virbac Paprec 3 heads a tightly packed vanguard of IMOCA Open 60 comprising the four boats which have probably done the most ocean miles this ye! ar settled in the top five.
Around 0330hrs (UTC/GMT) this Friday morning skipper Arnaud Boissières confirmed that the mast of their IMOCA Open 60 Akena Vérandas had broken some 270 miles WNW of the Breton peninsula. The duo had been lying in ninth place in the Transat Jacques Vabre double handed Transatlantic race which set off from Le Havre, France on Wednesday.
Arnaud Boissières reported that both he and Akena Vérandas’ co-skipper Gérald Veniard were uninjured. The mast is said to have broken in several places and the duo have managed to retain only a deck spreader, the boom and a short piece of tube. They are making progress! towards the French coast around 2.5 kts. “We are not hurt other than our pride. There was a very large crack.It was as if we had hit a cliff at ten knots The mast is broken in several places.” Reported Boissieres to his team early this morning.
Winner of this year’s Barcelona World Race Jean-Pierre Dick, racing with 2011 Solitaire du Figaro winner Jérémie Beyou had a small lead on Virbac-Paprec 3 – just around a mile – ahead of PRB with the leading duo drag racing within sight of each other between morning and the afternoon.
The recently launched MACIF of François Gabart has remained solid in fourth while Bernard Stamm’s newly launched Juan Kouyomdjian designed Cheminées Poujoulat has been the first day’s climber, rising from eighth to fifth with a display of fast reaching.
Franck-Yves Escoffier and Antoine Koch on Crepes Whaou! had a slightly bigger lead ! in the Multi 50 division, whilst in the 16 boat Class 40 Aquarelle.com of Yannick Bestaven and Eric Drouglazet were progressively coming under pressure from the young British duo Ned Collier-Wakefield and Sam Goodchild on Concise 2. Collier-Wakefield and Goodchild had cut away their French rivals’ lead from more than 11 miles to less than five and were quickest of the fleet this afternoon.
But as the first night of crashing through big contrary swells, fast reaching in over 30kts of breeze gave way to some sunshine and slightly lighter winds but the same confused seas the teams which are perhaps a little behind the hopes and expectations which have been built up over the preparation period are now dealing with realities. Early small miles lost – a less than perfect sail combination, ragged sail change or over-prudence – may sap the morale after the first day but it is essential to take the long view and to consider that others have alre! ady not been as fortunate.
The aggressive, contrary seas took a toll. First Thierry Bouchard revealed that he and co-skipper Gilles Berenger had turned towards France again with delamination damage to a bulkhead of Comiris Pôle Santé Elior. First official abandon was the withdrawl of the Class 40 Lecoq Cuisine due to damage to skipper Eric Lecoq’s back while the Mabit brothers on the Multi 50 Monopticien.com were forced also to retire due to a broken rudder pintle almost certainly due to hitting a floating object. In the IMOCA Open 60 Class Banque Populaire are compromised through the lack of their main gennaker was damaged when it went in the water when a halyard lashing failed soon after the start.
From the international perspective Alex Thomson and Guilermo Altadill h! ave themselves solidly in the pack in seventh, commendable so far considering that Thomson has not raced since the 2009 edition of this race when he was forced to abandon and he and the very experienced Spaniard have only had 12 training days with the Farr design. Mike Golding, when he spoke to this afternoon’s radio calls to Paris, was not overly happy with their modest early showing, acknowledging this was an early price to pay for having been away from racing also since 2009 and having only had a handful of days training inshore since the re-configured Gamesa was launched mid-September.
“ I’m not that happy with our position,” Golding confirmed, “but I’ll ignore that for now and we’ll just keep our hammer down. It is quite clear that the boats that have been on the circuit for the past couple of years have moved on apace and we have to step up our game. In fairness to us, to both of us we haven’t had our! training time on the boat and I have been away for some time. It will take a little bit of sorting out but at the moment our deficit is not too bad. We have a quite a complex weather system ahead of us and there will be opportunities for sure.”
In Class 40, co-skipper of 40 Degrees Jesse Naimark-Rowse, was just one who acknowledged they were slightly behind their early hopes, but felt they were gaining miles with British skipper Hannah Jenner, lying tenth and enjoying a good race in contact with the Norwegian duo on Solo and Nick Halmos and Hugh Piggin on 11th Hour Racing.
Quotes:
Jérémie Beyou, Virbac Paprec! 3:
« It was a rough wet night, we set a staysail after the Cherbourg Peninsula. We have been alongside PRB since this morning and it is nice to have someone to pace yourself against. Early in the morning our courses crossed. It is tight though but we have been a little bit better. We managed to get some sleep but have not felt like eating but the sun is out now. I was at the helm until the peninsula and then the pilot took over. We are south of the depression so getting into more westerly winds and then the weather models show different things after that. We have to be careful and see what develops.”
Yannick Bestaven, Aquarelle.com
« We had wind all night, with peaks at 25-30 knots, boat speed between 15 and 19kts and we managed it well, I fee! l. We sailed overpowered but reefed at the right time so have done well with managing the boat. So we still have some reserves because we worked well between getting rest and making the maneuvers It was very wet on deck. We are setting the right tempo. It is cool through, safe, on a reach you know when you have a fast boat and we have been pressing to make the biggest gains.”
Mike Golding (GBR) skipper, Gamesa:
“There are not too many options in the next 24h. As the day runs out today depending on which model you believe, we’ll be tacking over on to starboard and starting to make our way south for a while.
The models vary wildly later on down the course and one m! odel offering quite a northerly track and the other quite a southerly track, but they are all confused by where the Bermuda high seems to form. I think we have to keep watching before we make a fundamental decision about where we are going to go.”
Jesse Naimark-Rowse (USA), 40 Degrees (GBR):
“It has been good so far. Through the night we were not quite as fast as we might have been, or as we would have liked to have been and so that was a bit of a struggle. The boat seems to be going better now, our speed is better. We have no problems, we are sailing the boat well now, and so I think in the night we maybe had some issues with which sails to have up. But now mostly now everything is good. We hope to make some gains back through the fleet we hope at the moment.”
“ It was reaching conditions from 20-30kts with the Solent, reefs in and out, and for a little while our A3 small spinnaker, and so just making the sail changes was a lot of work. So we don’t sleep a whole lot, trading one hour driving each, one somebody resting a little.
We have had enough rest, just.
We can see 11th Hour Racing and Solo and besides commercial ships and fishing boats these are the only boats which we can see.
We are a little bit further back than we hoped for, when we came around Cherbourg we could see on the AIS that we were holding just 2.5 to 3 miles behind Bureau Veritas and then through the night we lost quite a few miles to them. Yes, we would like to be a little further ! along than we are, but overall we are happy with where we are.”