“Isn’t that beautiful. It feels so good. I am going to get to Les Sables d’Olonne” grinned Goodchild with a smudge of white Sikaflex glue on his nose.
ETA slipping
For the last three days the ETAs for the next group of Vendée Globe finishers has been slipping ever later and later, indeed a week ago the computer modelled routings had Jérémie Beyou (Charal) finished by now. But the increasingly complicated, challenging weather in the North Atlantic, between the Azores and the finish line off Les Sables d’Olonne has required all too slow down to cope with the strong winds and big seas.
An anticyclonic ridge off Cape Finisterre is now slowing down progress, already trapping some in light winds. And then two malicious low pressure systems are coming in one after the other. All in all these last battles at the end of their solo non stop races round the world really will take the tired skippers and their equally tired boats close to their limits.
"These last few days of racing are far from being easy," confirmed Clarisse Crémer (L'Occitane en Provence),
"It is better to avoid thinking too much about the number of bumps left, otherwise you will be disappointed. The idea is to take each thing one after the other. What is complicated is this uncertainty: will I arrive on Sunday or not? As long as the depression, which is forecast for that day in the Bay of Biscay, continues to accelerate, there is even a chance that I will have to slow down, and that is hard for my morale. Because deep down we cannot help but project ourselves across the finish line on that date, even if we know that we should not. It is a kind of mental torture, but we accept it, because it is the rule of the game," added Crémer
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