Thirteen competitors are still battling to complete the 9th edition of the Vendée Globe. In the last positions, a small group is reforming to support each other in the final weeks of the race.
This weekend, half of the Vendée Globe fleet will have crossed the finish line. Jérémie Beyou (one of the major victims at the start of the race) and Romain Attanasio are expected at Les Sables d’Olonne tomorrow late afternoon. After them, only eleven will remain in the race.
After 88 days of racing, cooperation is being organized at the back to face the final challenges, starting with crossing the Saint Helena High, whose winds are forcing Alexia Barrier to change tack regularly. At the 10 PM check-in, the Maralpine had just taken a more easterly course to catch winds in the high pressure, thus imitating Ari Huusela’s strategy a few miles behind.
A real understanding has developed between the two skippers since passing Cape Horn. “Ari makes me laugh. We communicate in English, but when we arrived at Cape Horn, he told me he was going to follow me because he had never passed it. I replied that neither had I, but we were going to go straight, to which he answered, yes, but there’s strong wind. Except there was strong wind everywhere, so it didn’t matter. Since then, we send each other little messages every day to check on each other, and it’s nice to have a travel companion. I also exchange with Sam, even though she’s a bit further along the route. We are a small team at the back who chat while taking care of each other, and that’s great,” rejoices the woman from the French Riviera.
A small group that could grow with the probable return to the sea of Isabelle Joschke in a few days. The sailor, who made a technical stop of about ten days in Salvador de Bahia, is ready to set sail again out of competition to complete her round-the-world journey like Sam Davies. And if the calculations are correct, she should find herself alongside TSE-4myplanet, which will pass the Brazilian city this weekend before facing the doldrums next week.
