VENDÉE GLOBE: BORIS STILL LEADING, BEST FINAL EVER

At two days from the end three boats on the fight for victory! Never happened before and when I mean fighting, I really mean that the chances are almost equal for the three, Boris, Dalin and Burton. 

With a difficult scenario ahead, with changing winds, the navigation has assumed an unexpected decisive role on this final stage, with several possible routes from Azores to Les Sables. 

Two days ago they were four fighting for the win but Bestavens’s route option, leaving the central Islands of Azores to the East proved to be excessive and now even Ruyant has managed to overtake him. 

When they were approaching the Azores, before taking very different routes, Dalin was leading on the water with a 34.7 miles advantage to Burton and 61.8 miles to Boris who, with 6 hours of compensation time to be discounted, was in fact leading the race.

Ruyant was 91.5 miles away from Dalin and Bestaven 155.7 miles, but with a compensation time of 10 hours 15 minutes, Bestaven was very much in the fight for victory. 

With only 680 miles to go, Ruyant and Bestaven at 184.5 and 253.8 miles to the leader, are out of the race to the win, but the very different courses of Dalin and Ruyant gave similar results to the point of being difficult to know who wins or loses this particular round. 

I guess that we will only know that in the next 22 hours, since the two departing points for the long tack to the North, offshore the Portuguese coast, are different with Dalin more to the East and Ruyant more to the West and it is difficult to foretell the advantages of Burton’s position. 

Boris, that I thought would be tailing Burton, because he only needs to stay close behind the leader to win the race, has done more than that and in the last 12 hours chose his own route, leaving Burton and putting his boat nearer to Dalin’s, but more to the west. 

On the route Burton has chosen there is more wind but it is 35 miles longer. Can he recover and gain over that distance in 370 miles before the final tack for Sables d’Olonne? I don’t know but it seems difficult. 

Assuming a 16.5kt average VMG speed it would take 22 hours to reach the point for the final tack, and for recovering those 35 miles that would mean a gain of 1.6kt on average speed from Burton over Dalin. Not an easy task and some luck needed.

Burton seems to be the one nearer the victory due to his compensation time and because he only has to maintain the 78 nm at which he is now from Dalin to win the race and it seems to me that his course more to the West gives him some slight advantage, in the hours to come. In fact I believe he can still lose a dozen miles for Dalin and still win the race.

This post was made having as reference the data available at 14.00, race time. The map shows the conditions they are going to encounter on the last tack to France and those are very good sailing conditions that will give an average speed between 14 and 18 knots.

Assuming an average speed of 16kt on the last leg (about 320nm) that would mean that the 6 hours Boris compensation in time, will be translated in about 96 miles and that should be more or less (depending on the average speed) the distance that Dalin has be ahead of him for winning the race. 

It could hardly have been more interesting. Even the incertitude brought by Boris time compensation introduced a bigger level of suspense on the final stages of the race. I guess they have been sleeping very little on the last days and are going to sleep even less on the next two days. 

The only thing for sure, regarding the end of the race is that on arrival the first three will be completely exhausted, having given all they could to win the Vendée. A titanic fight for the finish.