Jean-Pierre Dick has reduced sail to allow him to continue after a collison with something in the water damaged his leeward rudder. He’s waiting until better weather before gybing and setting about trying to repair it. Meanwhile, Mike Golding and Roland Jourdain are going at least 3 knots faster, so they will certanly overtake him long before he has (hopefully) managed to repair quite serious damage.
It took three hours for the supply ship Marion Dufresnes, a truck on the shore and a team of divers to refloat Bernard Stamm’s Cheminées Poujoulat, but she is probably not fit to sail. Stamm is emotionally exhausted by the prospect of having to leave her – like every Vendée skipper before him that has been forced to retire.
The Vendée Globe site has more detail, including a photo of the beached boat with a seal in the foreground.
