The Earthist Chronicles

“Vincent The Terrible,” as his competitors like to call him, conquered the Vendee Globe race last night, gliding home to a massive welcoming fleet in first place. He lapped the planet in just 87 days, 10 hours, 47 minutes, setting a new nonstop record for a solo sailor in a monohull. Jean Le Cam followed him in six and a half hours later. Riou had lots to say about his experience. Here are his comments:

Damage

“We suffered damage in two areas. On entering the Indian Ocean I suffered problems with my keel, the hydraulics in particular. That prevented me from canting the keel. I also had trouble with one of the ballast tanks. The water would come in and the air would go out and then the tank would become pressurised to the extent that it finally exploded. When on port tack I lacked 1.5 tonnes of water. Fortunately a lot of the climb up the Atlantic was on starboard tack. Thanks to my shore crew I had a very well prepared boat.”

Solitude

I didn’t suffer with the solitude but I like the contact with the shore. I spent a lot of time on the telephone. The difficult thing was that I had some hard days but I find it difficult to express my feelings. The descent down the Atlantic was pretty stable (in terms of place changing and pressure) but the return proved expensive. The Indian Ocean was very hard with some big depressions but we always had the choice as to whether to go there or not. We always had the solution of a compromise route. We finished with 8 days of beating between the Indian and the Pacific. The Southern Ocean is exceptional.

Ice

You can decide yourself if you are going to stay in the North or not and then we managed to get through the Pacific pretty much just on the front of a depression.

Management

Good routing of the weather enabled me to sail calmly. I was prepared to lose some miles in the pursuit of more favourable conditions to the north. I don’t go looking for difficult situations.

Weather

I love it. Strategy is the greatest aspect of sailing; the tactics and the strategy to choose the optimum route.

Mistakes

Jean made a mistake at the Horn. He went into a light wind zone which couldn’t be seen in the weather models. Satellite picture observation enabled me to spot it, but Jean went right into it. He lost 200 miles in 36 hours, maybe he didn’t have any Fleet 77 aboard. I was really fed up after the Azores, and also when I lost the lead after Australia. The tropical depression off Brazil and the big anticyclone after the Azores annoyed me a lot. I was very frustrated not to be able to mark my adversaries too. The conditions were changing an awful lot so I had to make a lot of sail changes.

Adventure

The Vendée Globe is an adventure and that’s not something you can forget. You have to prepare yourself for something new. You try to discover where your limits are. It’s a very important human dimension.

Performance

I haven’t always had the means to prepare myself in my career. This Vendée Globe enabled me to achieve that. I think it’s easier to win a Vendée Globe that requires versatility rather than pure racing.

Future

I’m not difficult. I like competitions of all types, on any kind of boat. I just want to continue to earn my living doing something I love to do and know how to do. I would like to do another Figaro campaign next year.

Boat

I’ve known this boat since it was conceived. It has a soul. I am happy for the people that designed it. I have never understood why you would choose to build a boat anywhere else than France. Boats have evolved greatly over a number of years as regards the hull shape.

Victory

Jean and Mike have raced a fine race. Being ahead doesn’t mean much in the southern Atlantic. Jean had a chance to comeback and didn’t take it.

Hmm. I don’t think Le Cam is going to like what Riou had to say much. But to the victor goes the right to talk a little trash. I guess…



Riou Returns: “Bon. Steak-frites s’il vous plait…”

Enough high speed sailing. It’s time for some kickass, crazy skiing. And I don’t know who they are, but Chris and Matt Collins are apparently just the guys to give it to us. Check out this Atom films production of the duo tearing it up and jumping off some rather large cliffs. Their Mama must have had a stressful time with these boys…



“I sure hope they get this in one take…”

Here’s a real puzzler. You’re on your way to a relaxing winter vacation, with a car full of beer and provisions. Suddenly, as you are winding along a mountain road, an avalanche buries your car. You open your window and try to dig your way out, but you have nowhere to put the snow and it starts to fill your car. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

Well, if you are a sharp Slovakian named Richard Kral, you take note of the fact that you have 60 half liters of beer. You drink a little, scoop a little snow from above your window, and pack it below your window. Then…you pee on it. It melts. You drink a little more beer, pack a little more snow, and pee again. And you keep repeating the cycle until you have packed and melted enough snow to burrow your way out. “It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I’m glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there,” said Kral, after he was found drunk and staggering on a mountain path four days after the avalanche hit.

I can’t even begin to imagine what the snow outside his car door looked like by the time he escaped. But I suspect there was a bit of serendipity involved. Why? My guess is that he was stuck in his car and just started drinking the beer, because why wouldn’t you? And when he started peeing out his window…EUREKA!



After his escape, Kral still had a surplus, so…

Unless his mast falls down or his boat sinks, it looks certain that Vincent Riou will be the first across the Vendee Globe finish line tonight. He’s got a lead of 97.4 miles over Jean Le Cam on Bonduelle with just 162.7 miles to go. Pretty hard to screw that up. Latest report here; latest positions here. Mike Golding is another 90-plus miles back, and resigning himself to a hard-fought third. Golding wanted a win in this race in the worst way and is torturing himself with “what ifs” before he even hits the docks. Here’s some of what he said during his last radio interview:

“It’s a shame, I would have liked to have won this race in particular and we have worked very hard towards that, but it’s quite clear that whatever you do, no matter how prepared you are there is still an element of it which is not fully in your control. It is a long race and lots of things can happen, and the good thing for me it is that I have competed in the Vendee twice and had major problems on one and very few on the other, but both times I have been successful in completing the course and there are lots of less fortunate people than myself, and again this race has been no different in having a very high rate of attrition…My regrets are obviously all linked to the halyard saga, and that is just a twofold regret and one is whether we made the right choice of what to carry as a spare, and that is a matter for us to discuss when we hit the shore, but secondly the fact that I did find a resolution that is working and that I am comfortable and confident with and so there is a slight annoyance in my mind that if only I’d elected to make this change on the first occasion then I wouldn’t have had to go through two of the halyard failures, one of them which was very expensive in terms of miles I had to give, so that is the only regret and that is remarkable that that is the only regret, because this is a long, long race, and yet I have had lots of other things happen to regret and yet I don’t regret them, so I feel very lucky to be in the situation where my regrets are so few, and I can say with honesty that I have been honest and true to myself and that I have sailed the best race that I can.”

Golding also spoke generously about his competition:

“I think that both the other guys (PRB and Bonduelle) have sailed a fabulous race. PRB I think I noticed very quickly how sharp he is tactically and I think that my first recognition of that was actually at Finisterre on the way out, when he took a little hitch down to Finisterre and got a little boost off it, and I remember thinking then he was really on the pace, and prepared to do whatever it takes. Jean: Jean has been extremely talented, extremely reliable and just consistently fast. I think that they have both done a fabulous job and I am honoured to be here amongst the two of them.”

It’s been quite a race…



Gloomy Golding: “Sigh. Stupid halyards…”

Still have cravings? Here, have another bon-bon. We gave you the Musto Performance skiff, a J-105, and the Melges 32. And now it’s time to go back to a new video of an old favorite: the PS8. (Read a Sailing Anarchy review here). We’ve featured this baby before. But Sportzboats USA has a nice new clip up. Watch it, and drool. If this keeps up, we’re going to have to start handing out Wetass bibs. Note to self: that’s not a bad idea, smurfy (uh-oh, I’ve been reading too many dispatches from Maud (see below))…



“Heh-heh. Can’t wait to see the faces on the big boys up ahead when we fly by them…”

She’s pushed out to a lead of 3 days and 10 hours (almost 700 miles), with just 1,714 miles left. Normally, that would be Game Over, barring a major breakdown. But the North Atlantic weather gods are not ready to let Ellen rest easy yet. They’ve thrown up one of the strangest weather patterns ever seen, and the prime feature is a massive, light wind, high pressure system that will be sitting directly between Ellen and the finish. See latest report here, and latest weather forecast here. Here’s what Ellen has to say about it all:

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with the high… I’m sitting here and every single report that’s coming in its moving – the four different models this morning, all say different things. The only thing I hope really doesn’t happen is that we end up finishing with 35 knots upwind and, to be honest, I think that’s the most likely scenario. I’m not trying to be negative, it’s going to be really, really bad at the end if that’s what happened. It will be ‘boat-breaking’ scenario…

My hands are so hard and so tight and so rotten…they look quite disgusting! There is white rot underneath all my fingernails, I can chew bits of the skin off without feeling a thing, it’s that hard and that knackered. Not very beautiful…”

No, it’s not. But skin is very nutricious…



Snack, Anyone?: If this is what they looked like at Cape Horn, I’m not sure we want to see an update…

I’m beginning to worry about Mme. Fontenoy, all by her lonesome out there in the Pacific. She’s got months and months, and miles and miles, of rowing to go before she makes landfall in Tahiti. And she’s already created an entire fantasy world. Check out this recent report. I admit the rough translation only makes it sound more bizarre, but still:

“It’s about 11 smurf in the morning when it happened. I was smurfy rowing, my ipod in the smurf pocket; and then, a smurfy wave, 3 times bigger than a smurf bush arrived on OCÉOR’s portside. My ipod was running away but nevertheless, the smurf wave catched him, and in a last cry he couldn’t even let Johann Pachelbel finish my favourite canons.

The ocean, feeling that I was smurf angry, remained quiet.

My little Ipod in my smurf hands, trying to dry it, turning it in all ways but nothing to do.

I organised a little altar, with a small candle (looking like a duck) offered by Jean Jacques D.

Pétula manage all this really well.”

Are the Smurfs still big in France? Thank god Petula is still there. Wait, who the hell is Petula…?



Mad Maud: “I’d better finish this quickly. It’s almost Petula’s birthday. Hmm, I wonder if I should start rowing again tomorrow…”

Well, it looks as if Vincent Riou on PRB is surviving (so far) the massive risk he took by heading north and separating from his pursuers, Jean Le Cam and Mike Golding. He’s sailing directly toward the finish, which is now less than 400 miles away, and holding a lead of just over 20 miles on Le Cam. Golding has fallen back to 77 miles, and doesn’t look like a threat. See daily report here; and latest positions here. Riou is in an older boat (it won the last Vendee) so you know he’s sailing flat out, on the edge of any number of disasters. Le Cam is no doubt doing the same, so we’ll see if Golding’s suspicion that someone’s rig might fall over the side before all is said and done comes true. Here’s Riou’s assessment of the end game. He sounds very French, very cool, about the whole thing. But do I detect a slight note of regret that this epic battle is drawing to a close?:

“Conditions are like they were the other night. It’s unstable so you have to take care of the boat, on course, dividing my time between easing and hardening up the sheets. I have little siestas, waking up when the boat stops so I’ve no idea how long they last. It was cold last night but it’s warmed up a bit now.” Asked if things were going to plan, Vincent replied in a dead pan voice “they’re going. I’m making do with what I’ve got. It’s nice to be back in home waters and it will be good to get home. I’ve got wind shifts of 30˚ with 8 to 18 knots last night. Jean is not on course and he’s going slower. I’m reaching at the moment though it can change to close-reaching in the space of just 5 minutes, while he will be headed fortunately. It all depends on the cloud cover. I’m not between Jean and the mark so I haven’t got perfect control. You just have to make as much ground as you can, you mustn’t fall asleep. I have all the cards in my hand but when racing you always know you have to be careful. I’ll be reaching to Les Sables d’Olonne and I think I’ll be behind a small light patch. It doesn’t look like a clean lift for Jean but I reckon he may make a direct course. I’m limiting myself to the bare minimum in terms of sleeping, eating and drinking. It’s been a fine race, I knew this kind of finish was possible but didn’t quite imagine this. I don’t feel stressed but it is tiring. I hope to get in, in around 36 hours time but it may well be 38.”

I can’t get over the fact that less than 2 hours separate these guys after an entire lap of the globe. We’ll update frequently as the boats approach the finish…



PRB Pursued: “Merde, if I have to keep looking over my shoulder all the way to the finish I’m going to need neck surgery…”

Found some more (see next post) surfing, planing, spray-throwing action over at Sailing Anarchy. Perfect for anyone trapped in the frozen wastes of winter…

Clip 1: Check out this J-105 (Quicktime only, again; it’s officially a trend) on the way out to the race course at Key West 2005. That’s about as fast as a J-105 will ever look…

Clip 2: And here’s the spanking new Melges 32 doing what it is designed to do: fly offwind and get everyone soaking wet. Bonus vid: click here for a dockside tour of the Melges 32 (TWC. Always willing to go the extra mile, I mean Google search)…

And prostrate yourselves before this very seductive video (Quicktime only; stop whining, just get it…) of Musto’s performance skiff (which I learned of via an interesting–and wildly eclectic–blog called “The Horse’s Mouth”). This pocket rocket is a solo ride (the first singlehanded trap skiff with gennaker), which makes finding crew easy but boathandling demanding. The video shows you about all you need to know about the “performance” side. But if you want more blather, Sailpower has an in-depth review. Or you can read this ale-soaked regatta diary by double-Olympic medalist in the 49er, Simon Hiscocks. Hiscocks did a lot of swimming, so the thing sounds pretty damn tricky (though it’s hard to know for sure since it appears he was either drunk or hungover most of the time). Looks like a great little package…



Hiscocks Hikes It Out: “Damn, it’s hard to reach for a beer from out here. No wonder I prefer to sail with crew…”