Route du Rhum: no one-two punch for Mura, Pedote tenth

No one-two punch for Andrea Mura at the Route du Rhum (3,542 miles solo between Saint Malo and Point-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe), after her victory in 2010: on November 19 evening, Anne Caseneuve (photo above) on the trimaran ANEO crossed the Rhum-class finish line first. A success in many ways heralded after the stalling of Sardinian Wind in the Azores.

WALLS DEFENDS SILVER
A success that Andrea Mura’s Team nevertheless applauds, “paying due honor to the winner of one of the least obvious Route du Rhum in history.” But the regatta is still not over: Mura currently looks like the favorite in the chase for second place, pulling away from the great Robin Knox-Jonhston on Green Power and Wilfrid Clerton on “Cap au Cap”-there are still 236 miles to go before the finish in Point-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. A run-up that seemed impossible until three days ago, when it had slipped as low as fifth place. And still, the silver is a more than decent result to defend with teeth, to close her career on the Open 50 Vento di Sardegna and then move on to the new IMOCA 60 ahead of the 2016 Vendée Globe.

PEDOTE BETRAYED BY A BUOY, BUT IS STILL 10TH!
Giancarlo Pedote also showed his “sailor’s zest” among the Class 40s, but what bad luck! Do you remember? On the first night of racing he had to repair to Roscoff for a breakdown, kicking off a comeback race. Out of over 40 boats he had come in 16th place, then even ninth. In the end he had to “settle” for 10th place (a result never achieved by any Italian) with a time of 18 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds: he was slowed down just in the last few miles. He wrote yesterday, “The excessively low speed compared to my average gaits (at least 3 knots less than we normally do in these winds) and the unsteadiness of the boat prompted me to look for a reason that I could not see, a reason that in fact lay under Fantastica: something large is stuck in the keel. It is probably a fisherman’s buoy, with at least 50 meters of tow line.”

Numerous fishing boats operate around Guadeloupe, but not all of them use buoys marked on the official maps, which the organization provided to navigators and which Giancarlo considered well during his approach to the archipelago. “I will have to dive, there is no other way. I will wait until I get behind the island, in an area where the winds are mitigated by the altitude of the land, stop the boat, notify the organization, and dive in to free the keel. I have already done it with Prysmian ITA 747, now I will have to do it again.”