Vendée Globe - one stretcher case, three limping wounded
Mike Golding, having proved his tactics by taking the lead after LoÏc Peyron dismasted, has now lost his own mast. That makes three battered boats sailing to Perth, and one is still pretty flaky. Local workers created a steel structure to allow the keel of Temenos to be held in place and allow a small amount of movement, but Dominic Wavre was only a few hours out of Kerguelen when he reported that the 100Kg part looked too weak for the strains it was enduring in the continuing heavy weather. He has filled all his ballast tanks and put both daggerboards down to dampen the motion as much as possible, and is making 8 to 10 knots under storm jib and three reefs in the main.
Brian Thompson has been having troubles with his autopilot, which wiped out Bahrain Team Pindar in spectacular fashion in the steep seas and heavy winds. The boat broached and went completely round through the eye of the wind, leaving her with keel and ballast to leeward and the mast horizontal. Both he and rival Sam Davies, who had been trying to match speeds with Michel Desjoyeaux, have slowed down. As Sam said in her latest call, she is in the race to finish, not to try and win it.
After what has happened to three of the top men in this patch of sea, she and Brian won’t be the only ones to start being extra careful.
Oh. The stretcher case. A tired but relieved Bernard Stamm manged to get Cheminées Poujoulat ready in time to ship her and himself aboard Marion Dufresne before she left.
