Stop, Go While five different boats in the Transat Jacques Vabre double handed race from Le Havre to Itajaí revealed over the course of today (Monday) that they will make technical pit stops, the race for the IMOCA Open 60 fleet became more tactical as they seek the best lanes of breeze, gybing downwind 150 miles north of Madeira and the pair of MOD70s were passing the latitude of the Canary Islands still making regular speeds of 23-25kts. After capsizing in gusty, shifty tradewinds when they broached 220 miles west of Lisbon late on Sunday night, the French co-skippers of Arkema-Region Aquitaine, Lalou Roucayrol and Mayeul Riffet, dived under their upturned Multi 50 trimaran today to free their broken mast and tidy what they could with a view to being towed towards Lisbon. Express pit stops were signalled today by the class leaders in both the Multi 50 class and Class 40. The fact that both Actual (Yves Le Blevec and Kito de Pavant) and GDF SUEZ (Sebastien Rogues and Fabien Delahaye) extended their respective leads in the Multi 50 and Class 40 divisions will certainly help their challenge when they stop to make fast repairs. Actual which leads the Multi50 fleet now by 68.4 miles ahead of FenetreA-Cardinal (Erwan Le Roux and Yann Elies) have said they plan to stop in Madeira and had less than 60 miles to the island on the 1500hrs UTC ranking this afternoon. They aim to replace their wind instruments at the top of their mast. That is the same key repair that the Class 40 leaders aim to complete on the NW Spanish coast. They were about 60 miles off the coast on the same 1500hrs ranking but were making 9 kts. Three other Class 40s announced during today that they will stop too. Alex Pella and Pablo Santurde on the Spanish designed and built Tales Santander 2014 in eighth place are heading into La Coruna with a rudder problem. The British-American duo on 11th Hour Racing Hannah Jenner and Rob Windsor are returning towards Lorient after their forestay failed dumping their Solent headsail into the water. Luckily they managed to save their rig. There were lucky escapes too for both BET1128 which also dropped their mast when their Solent hook failed, and also for the British duo on Caterham Challenge, Brian Thompson and Mike Gascoyne, who were racing close enough to the Italian-French duo Gaetano Mura and Sam Manuard that they had to alter course to avoid BET 1128 when the mast fell backwards. BET 1128 re-set their mast using a combination of halyards and lines but will also make a halt to repair the failed swivelling hook and some damaged electrical cables inside the mast
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 06:54:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015