Vendée Globe, Charlie Dalin tries first breakaway: at 23 knots to Finisterre

The going gets tough right away at the Vende Globe, with 24 hours to go before the start of the round-the-world race, the rankings begin to take a first, albeit extremely provisional, shape. A first strategic passage is also approaching, namely that of Cape Finisterre, which ideally concludes the very first phase of the race following the start. The unfolding situation in the leaderboard is of a first mini breakaway by Charlie Dalin on Macif, who, on the strength of high performances of his Imoca in the medium-light wind, almost immediately set the pace. Macif has been sailing consistently over 20 knots in the last few hours, and has put a cushion of about ten miles on the first pursuer, Sebastien Simon. Giancarlo Pedote with Prysmian is sailing around 20th position, among the northernmost in the fleet. He seems to want to set a wide passage of the Cape, perhaps with the idea of aiming for a more westerly position later. Right now Prysmian is about 40 miles behind the provisional race leader. Jean Le Cam’s performance on his new but foil-less boat, currently in the top 10, is interesting: he doesn’t seem to be keeping up the frenzied pace of the leaders, but with a tacking aimed at minimizing the miles sailed he is having a very effective, however fast, trajectory to limit the gap. The best among the women, on the other hand, seems to be Justine Mettreaux at the moment, close to the top 5, with excellent speed averages not too dissimilar to those of Charlie Dalin. In the evening with the passage to Finisterre of the front runners it will also become clear who will aim directly south along the coast of Portugal and who will aim for a more westerly positioning before diving south.

Vendée Globe – Analyses of the “Process”

With the Vendée Globe Trial, of which the first two episodes have aired, each week we will analyze everything that is happening at the round-the-world race, also trying to understand the skippers’ course and weather choices. In yesterday’s episode, with Francesca Clapcich, Alberto Bona, and our “technicians” Gianni Bianchini and Bernardo Zin, we talked about the new boats and the weather scenarios of the first days of racing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w8qZnGfWMM&t=3920s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmztQ6MGZY0&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA8liNcWjj0&t=419s