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Plenty of wind for one, Roland Jourdain breaks the 24 hour distance record on his approach to Les Sables d'Olone, but Marc Thiercelin loses hundreds of miles due to a faulty genoa and a bad weather decision. Meanwhile, Catherine Chabaud loses her mast 550 miles from the finish and within striking distance of fifth-placed Dominic Wavre February 21, 2001 With Ellen MacArthur welcomed safely home, complete with Breton bagpipes and thousands of adoring fans, Roland Jourdain had no need to push his boat to record heights. And he didn't. "I saw that the conditions were ideal. I wasn't keen to take such a risk so close to the finish, but I felt that my boat was telling me to go for it, so I told her 'Okay, I'll give you the main with one reef and the staysail and you fly with that'. And then she went and broke the record all by herself by covering 435.3 miles in 24 hours." In fact, he bettered Dominique Wavre's record - set last December as he exited the South Atlantic and entered the Southern Ocean - by 4.6 miles, averaging 18.14 knots. For the man who had to restart the Vendee Globe - thanks to a broken halyard and a cracked tooth - and then caught-up with the leaders so magnificently, only to lose his top placing again due to halyard problems ... Well, this talented sailor sure knows how to end on a high note. For the record the top three skippers finished in this order: Michael Desjoyeux - 93days, 03
hours, 56 minutes. Thiercelin comes unstuck Meanwhile, Jourdain's sparring partner right up the Atlantic, Marc Thiercelin, has come all un-glued at the last moment. His decision to sail downwind, to the west and around a zone of north-Atlantic high pressure, has paid bitter returns. As with the 1994-95 race, when he challenged Herve Laurent for second place, Thiercelin recognised that his boat was designed for downwind, not upwind conditions. So he chose a downwind course, despite the fact that it included more miles of sailing. Jourdain's boat, meanwhile, sails well upwind - and so he chose to navigate through the zone of high pressure, coping with flukey winds but staying on the rhum line for home. In the last Vendee Globe, this was exactly the strategy adopted by Laurent. In that last race, Laurent went on to 'win' the race around the North Atlantic High, but lost it in downwind conditions in the Bay of Biscay. Thiercelin surfed past him to claim second place in the 1994-95 Vendee Globe, behind Christophe Auguin. This year, Thiercelin's brave move (he had nothing to lose, and at the time was behind Jourdain by 300 miles) almost looked like it would pay off. He sailed into south-west winds preceding a frontal change well before they affected Jourdain - off to the east. But Neptune didn't allow that to happen. A low began to form within the frontal cloud and directly on top of Thiercelin, bringing light and variable winds from all directions. Considering Thiercelin had trouble furling his gennaker, he was unable to stow the big sail and unable to raise his staysail - a jib much more suited to sailing close to the wind. In addition, his large, deck-mounted spreaders, prevented him from sheeting his gennaker all the way home. In short, he could only perform with winds off his beam. And so, Theircelin was stuck. Jourdain, meanwhile, positioned further north was unaffected by the low over Thiercelin. Jourdain sailed a record run in 24 hours and crossed the bar at Les Sables d'Olonne to claim third place. Thiercelin continued to wallow in the east Atlantic for another six days, 19 hours - battling bubbles of high pressure as they moved out of Europe and into the east Atlantic. Unable to point any higher than 40 degrees, he at one point was just 40 miles from the Isles of Scilly before he was able to tack and head for Les Sables d'Olonne. He finished, at last, on February 20. Expect a fifth-placed finish from Dominic Wavre, followed closely behind (70 miles at the moment) by Thomas Coville - who sailed alongside MacArthur in the Southern Indian Ocean, before being hampered by gear failure and a thumb injury. © Jamie Brown/weather-wise.com 2001 Marc Thiercelin Active Wear), February 14: "I've got going again since yesterday afternoon so life's better now. After the Azores, I had nearly two days of calms. I've managed to fork off to the East and finally got winds from behind, although now they have eased off a little. Still unable to really make a precise ETA. I hope Friday! Maybe Saturday. I really want to get in under 100 days, in any case it would be some consolation for me! I'm still not convinced by the giant spreader style of rig. Golding has had his problems. Yves also! The advantage is in fact the wing mast, but the recent boats have wing masts without needing the giant spreaders to hold them in place. Also, you can't pull the gennaker hard in and the poles weigh a lot as well. They were designed to hold up a wing mast and those kind of masts now hold on their own." February 20:
"It remains a great adventure. More an inner voyage than one with the
elements this time, in fact. I will never forget the Doldrums and the North
Atlantic. I really want to get back to the Southern Ocean, it was just
incredible. The last Vendée Globe was more physical, this one much more
tactical. All three of my circumnavigations have been totally different. It was
my dream to arrive without any other raceboats on the pontoon but it didn¹t
happen, and I accept that. February 20: "It was 0130 UTC, I was asleep by the chart table. The boat had been sailing upwind for 24 hours in a fairly chaotic sea, under two reefs and staysail. I awoke because I'd fallen on the bulkhead. There was a great 'crack' and I leaped out of the cabin to see that there was nothing of the rig left on the deck, just a stub of mast. The mast had broken above the first spreader and I spent the next two hours clearing the debris. It looked really apocalyptic! "First
off, I tried to get the main sail off the boom. I removed the shroud fittings,
and got rid of all the starboard stanchions. The spar for the furler had begun
to pierce the hull. There was no more guard-rail or lifelines at the stern. I
only managed to recuperate the boom. I saved plenty of pieces though it looked
like I had massacred my boat. My knees are wrecked as I've been crawling around
on all fours, otherwise I am okay. It was fortunate that the mast fell into the
water and not through the hull. Fleet positions The east Atlantic is being prepared for Roland Jourdain's record run: A ridge of high pressure fills the void after the powerful front that sent Desjoyeux home crosses into Europe. For the next 36 hours Jourdain will only make 200 miles closer to Les Sables d'Olonne as the ocean flattens out. This front pushing into a ridge of high pressure is a typical signature for record breaking runs. Fleet positions For the next 24 hours Jourdain sails a record 435.3 miles under staysail and reefed main. He wasn't even trying! However, with southwest winds preceding a frontal system blowing across a flat sea, conditions were right for the job. Fleet positions At the end of Jourdain's run, high pressure pushes to the west from Spain, as the low pressure cell responsible for the frontal wind system rides further to the north. Winds ease but Jourdain continues to surf home. Thiercelin, meanwhile, has landed in the middle of high pressure and is now 1000 miles further behind than he was before he attempted to sail around the north Atlantic high. Pictures courtesy of Virtual Spectator. Images courtesy of the UK Met Office. Plenty of south-west wind in the Bay of Biscay preceding this approaching front - the concentrated isobars tell that story. But the keys to Jourdain's record run include relatively flat seas, left over from the previous ridge of high pressure, and steady winds from one direction - preventing the build up of dangerous cross-seas. Once the front passes, there will be more wind from the north west, but leftover slop from the southwest winds of before will tend to slow a boat down. In this case, the front never crossed the French coast, but rolled to the north as the strong European high (1041hPa!) forced the centre of low pressure further and further north. In Thiercelin's case, a low forms within the frontal cloud, west of Spain, and delivers weak winds from all directions. He is left wallowing in poor conditions, unable to sheet home his gennaker and unable to raise his staysail. In following days, the presence of high pressure west of Spain and in the Bay of Biscay forced him to sail a torturous course - always with the wind on his beam - east then west then north, almost to the Isles of Scilly, before he was able to tack and make for Les Sables d'Olonne. Images courtesy of the UK Met Office. In this animated image, the frontal cloud which helped Jourdain deliver a record 24 hour run, moves away to the north-east - while the low forming within its south-western tail develops then evaporates. Thiercelin is below the weak, swirling low and is unable to tap into the energy given to Jourdain, positioned further north and east. More great reading: Catch up on all the past action in our race archive. Follow the action between the world's fastest multihulls in The Race Vendee Globe Race headquarters Re-live the Sydney to Hobart yacht race! Break ice in the Ross Sea! Re-live Bernard Stamm's record Atlantic crossing |