Vendée Globe: Sebastien Simon loses a foil to structural failure but stays in the race

It had succeeded Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss in 2017 to finish the Vendée Globe with only one foil, Sebastien Simon with his Groupe Dubrueil, which has been sailing without its right appendage for 24 hours, will also try. The Frenchman, so far the author of a top-notch regatta and also the author of the 24-hour record, has complained of a structural failure of his right foil.

Vendée Globe – how to sail without foil

The de facto appendage has been lost, here in the port tack Simon will be sailing in classic mode and not flying, having to adapt the adjustments and the way of taking the boat to a different trim. It changes the amount of sail to expose to the wind, the angle to give to the keel, and the amount of water to have in the ballasts. In this regard, we recommend that you follow the next episode of The Vendé Globe Trial (airing Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., all information at the bottom of this article), where we will devote a focus to the topic.

Note also how, based on the rotation of weather systems, it is likely that Simon for most of the Southern Oceans will have to sail port tack, thus on the edge without the starboard foil. In contrast, the Atlantic ascent should be with a predominance of starboard tack, thus on the edge of the port foil. As he stated, the speed peaks will be 30% lower, however Simon already in these hours has shown that he can still be quite fast, averaging over 20 knots. The Frenchman is 165 miles behind Charlie Dalin, the breakaway leader of this Vendée Globe on his Macif. In third is Yoann Richomme at 354 miles, in fourth Thomas Ruyant at 481. Dalin has to deal with the margin of a high pressure to manage to avoid ending up in a low wind zone, and despite Simon’s foil problem in the last 12 hours he has lost about 50 miles on him. Giancarlo Pedote on Prysmian is in 24th position, at 2800 miles, in a ranking position that he himself described as difficult to digest, for a round-the-world race that so far has been brutally uphill for the Italian, but he has the personality to be able to look ahead and try to improve his position.

The Vendée Globe Trial

In the last episode we discussed the strategic situation of the Kerguelen Islands depression, in the next one aired on Wednesday, December 11 at 6:30 p.m. on our YouTube and Facebook channels, in addition to the Simon incident we will analyze the first strategic scenarios at the entrance to the Pacific Ocean.