Hare happy with second Cape
Leader Yannick Bestaven is being forced to play chicken with the Vendée Globe’s ice zone limit in the South Pacific as he seeks to extricate his Maître CoQ IV first from a frustrating anticyclone which is offering unusually light to moderate breezes even though they are racing at 55 degrees south. Bestaven, who has seen his margin eroded to 84 miles by Figaro one design ace Charlie Dalin while Thomas Ruyant is also about 80 miles behind.
The problem all three leaders face is that the centre of the system is moving east at more or less the same speed as they are. But if Bestaven can wriggle clear and his pursuers remain snared then the leader could hit the jackpot, gaining an advance of many hundreds of miles. Bestaven took himself to within 3.4 nautical of the virtual line today before he gybed back north-eastwards, all the time trying to stay as far south as he could where the winds are strongest.
23rd December 2020
Pip Hare takes her turn to pass Cape Leeuwin
Compared with the last two editions of the Vendée Globe which, by Day 45, had both been distilled down to high octane drag race sprints across the Pacific to Cape Horn, at the front this ninth edition is increasingly becoming an exacting game of strategy and patience.
For the top ten right now rather than spearing eastwards to Point Nemo, the most remote spot on the course which right now is still over 1000 miles to the east, the sport is more reminiscent of an inshore race in the Mediterranean in benign, fickle breezes, fighting with the track of a voracious zone of light winds,
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French skipper Yannick Bestaven extended his lead in the round-the-world Vendee Globe on Wednesday but admitted he was getting goosebumps with the changing weather patterns potentially giving his two main rivals a chance to close up the gap.
Bestaven, skippering the foiled Maitre Coq, was 97.8 nautical miles ahead of Charlie Dalin on Apivia at 1100GMT Wednesday and 177.7 nm in front of Thomas Ruyant on LinkedOut.
These three, all on craft with foils, which allow them to rise on top of the water and fly across the waves, remain the main contenders.
The trio have been ahead since the exits of Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss and Kevin Escoffier whose yacht snapped and folded at a right angle then sank in seconds in the Roaring 40s, prompting a tense night-time rescue.