Beyou should finish fourth tonight

Behind Beyou the game is very open with the next five boats all still within 120 nautical miles. The fight for fifth and sixth between Paul Meilhat (Biotherm) and Nico Lunven (HOLCIM PRB) is still close with only 30 or so miles between them, Meilhat leading into the ridge might anticipate some compression, maybe seeing Nico catch more miles. 

Ju Ju keeps pushing!

 And the remarkable Swiss skipper Justine Mettraux (TeamWork-Team Snef) has not said her last words in this race, she has tacked nicely up the best band of N’ly breeze and seems set to move up to seventh. 
Sam Goodchild (VULNERABLE) is in close to the Portuguese coast in light winds and may now also have lost out to his team-mate Thomas Ruyant (VULNERABLE)

And the battle for tenth is also intensifying, Vendéen skipper Benjamin Dutreux (Guyot Environnement-Water Family) is increasingly being pressurised by Clarisse Crémer (L’Occitane en Provence). In terms of the race to the finish Crémer has the better, more powerful reaching boat in the Verdier design which is a generation newer and which was first across the finish line of the last Vendée Globe as Charlie Dalin’s Apivia. Correspondingly Dutreux’s boat finished second in 2016-17 as Hugo Boss. This morning there is just 42 miles between them. Germany’s Boris Herrmann (Malizia Seaexplorer) is pushing hard in 13th, sailing on port tack on his good foil. 

Daggerboard duel 

Tanguy Le Turquais (Lazaire) is still the best of the daggerboard boats only eight miles ahead of Benjamin Ferré (Monoyeur-Duo For A Job) as they close reach upwind in the modest NE’ly trades. They are 17th and 18th, just behind Isabelle Joschke (MACSF) who is pleased to be going faster in 15th but has hurt her hip, 

“I am quite ambivalent to with the way things are going, I have noticed that for a long time now, it is not really me who decides, it is the elements! I do what I can, but no matter how hard I try, there are times when there is no wind and we regroup, and we start again, and then sometimes it goes well for me, sometimes not so well! What I can say is that on the way back up from Brazil I could have hoped to take a bigger lead over the competitors with daggerboards, and if the Doldrums had not been so merciless, I could have kept a small lead, and it would not have been too much because right now I am on starboard tack, I have all my potential, but once I have passed the Azores high I will be on port tack and then it will not be the same at all! 

And back in 31st place Ollie Heer is going well on Tut Gut now but rues his decision to move west where he ran out of wind, but the Swiss German skipper said this morning, “I am a little bit frustrated about the wind hole I sailed into, whether that was bad luck of bad navigation, I have to live with. Other than that I have really nice conditions, warm weather I am drying everything out a bit. I should not really complain too much. For the last 20 hours I am making good progress, averaging 10 knots again. I am on my way again!"

"I am looking at what is happening at the front a little bit, the racing is intense between fourth and tenth, I think that is testament to the class that the boats are so close, and It is good to spend some time watching the tracker and watching the weather. It is quite scary the weather is going through there. I feel quite bad for Sam Goodchild what he has had to go through with an older generation he was phenomenal and then have the mainsail rip so close to the finish is a real shame. So I feel for him."

"It was clear from before the beginning that this was a two fleet race. You cannot compare the daggerboard boats at all to the modern foiling boats, so I am just enjoying following them."
"I am frustrated seeing Antoine pulling away in a weather system which I assumed was not a viable option to get into, he just made it, and even Jingkun Xu sailed past me but he did not catch the weather system and so I expect to be ahead of him tomorrow morning but in a way it is nice to have some boats around me rather than have no boats for hundreds of miles around me, it makes me think more closely about my routing choices.”

And Belgium’s Denis van Weynbergh (D’Ieteren Group) will pass Cape Horn this morning closing the door to the Pacific as the last skipper in the race to pass the third Great Cape.