Who is Yannick Bestaven, the new Vendée Globe leader? A 48-years-old French engineer, responsible for the development of the first of the modern hydro-generators, the Watt&Sea , and that like many solo racers started his solo offshore career in the minis, in 1998. In 2001 he won the mini-transat, in a boat built by himself.
After the minis he raced on multi Orma 60 and on the Figaros (2nd rookie on the Solitaire in 2005) with medium results.
Attempted his first and very short Vendée Globe in 2008, with an old boat, but lost the mast very early in the race.
The 2nd big victory was in 2011, when he won the class 40 on the Transat Jacques Favre (with Éric Drouglazet) . After being 4th in 2013, he won again, on class 40, that Transat in 2015 (with Pierre Brasseur).
In 2017 he was 5th on the Jacques Favre but this time in an Imoca, with Kito de Pavant (Kito’s boat). He bought an old Imoca for doing the Route du Rhum, but lost the mast (again) and had to abandon.
He bought his current boat in 2018 to make this Vendee and curiously this Imoca, even if now owned by him maintained the Sponsor and the name, Maître Coq IV, the same with which Jérémie Beyou was 3rd on the last Vendée. It is a relatively new boat, launched in 2015 and designed by Verdier – VPLP.
With this boat, and learning how to sail it with the previous owner, Roland Jourdain, he was 11th on the 2019 Transat Jacques-Vabre 2019 but was a lot better alone on the Vendée-Arctique-Les Sables-d'Olonne (6th), the race that was just before the Vendée and now he sails his boat even faster, having been on 24 hour averages many times the fastest among all racing at the head of the race.
Yes, the organization still gives Dalin as leader of the race but that is absurd because, with the time allowance and the miles that correspond to it, he is the one leading and with some advantage.
There is no reason for not having already attributed to him, and the others, the time they lost when they, at the request of the organization, stopped the race for looking for Kevin Escoffier.
He was the only one that had to invert course to go to the area and he lost at least 8 or 9 hours or more, due to having inverted course to the accident location.
In fact it would make more sense and it would be more than just that instead of hours they would attribute them miles, not hours because depending on the sea and wind conditions those hours can be translated into very different miles.
What they should do was to transform that time in miles considering the speed they had been making on the last for hours before being diverted by the organization or the miles Ruyant, the one that was sailing closer to them had made in those hours.
That would have the advantage of, regarding these sailors, allowing to show his real position but also with a ghost image in the tracker, the position where they really are regarding the race classification.
This would allow to end this ridicule situation, with the organization showing a leader that is not in fact the leader anymore. We are talking here about a lot of miles: when Bestaven was diverted by the organization to help with the searches he was the only one who had to sail backwards.
In the last 4 hours before that he had made an average of 16.6 knots and Ruyant, who was the closest to Bestaven, and who was doing a very similar average , doing an average of more than 17 knots in the following eight hours.
If the average Bestaven was making in the last 4 hours is considered (16.6 knots) and considering that he only lost 8 hours (it was more), it gives a lost distance of 133 miles. If they consider the average speed of Ruyant on the next 8 hours after he was stopped by the organization, it will give a redress of 139 nautical miles.
As Bestaven yesterday was at only 112 miles from Dalin, now he is at 91.6 and this means that he has been leading the the Vendée for some days already. The not disclosure of the redress given to these sailors starts to be scandalous since it has a direct implication on who is leading the race and regarding the first places.
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