Thomas Ruyant, the one that on the last video, of the previous post about the Vendee globe, looked quite relaxed, at the sound of Regae, after having so much troubles with the boat before, was hit again hard by extreme bad luck: He was escaping a huge storm (60 to 70K winds) sailing North with winds well over 40, sometimes gusting over 50k and when he seemed to have the situation all under control----BAM---- the boat hit something at so much speed and so hard that almost broke the boat in half. On his words:
“It was a bit like a car accident. The boat came to a sudden halt. It was an extremely violent shock. I felt extremely down about it yesterday, but I’m finding the motivation to bring my boat safely to port. That is my priority”
He was still on high winds and heavy seas when he collided violently with something, probably a container. He understood quickly that he had a badly damaged boat, not only structurally but making water and almost without steering (one of the rudders broke and the other was damaged). He passed all night heaving too, with the boat almost stopped, trying to reduce to a minimum the boat stress and keeping it on one piece.
After that we went in emergency repair mode, filling holes with resin and trying to fix the remaining rudder while he tries to go slowly to a port on New Zealand coast, saving his boat. But more bad luck is on his way and at the speed he can make, he is going to be hit again by another storm, already near New Zealand South coast and I doubt the boat can resist to that. https://gis.ee/vg/
I am sure NZ rescue service is at full alert and ready to pick him up if his boat breaks in half, while he is attempting that heroic boat rescue attempt. While this is happening nobody cares about the race and all eyes are focused on this drama with everybody wishing the best of luck to him. He really needs it!!!
I bet that when Le Cam, one of the other racers, said some days ago that Thomas was going to cry, referring a storm on his way, he would never imagine how his words would be prophetic. On the end of the last movie he is almost crying. Very sad, he deserved not to have so much bad luck 😞
The Ice 52 had bad luck: Last year it was nominated for the European yacht of the year contest and had as direct competition the Solaris 50. Hard to beat the Solaris 50, that has a great finish, a very good interior design and is a beautiful boat.
Lot's of tests, movies and publicity have been made regarding the Solaris 50 and very little to the Ice 52, only a real test sail by a German sail magazine, even if several yachts have been made and sold. The Ice 52 certainly deserved more. Last year in Dusseldorf I looked with special attention at these two babies, that share some common characteristics regarding design, including a dinghy garage and an interior that is not maximized for taking the maximum number of guests, but for two couples to cruise in comfort. Besides both are truly gorgeous boats.
The interior of the Solaris 50 seemed to me a bit better designed and maybe just a bit better finished while the interior of the Ice 52 was just a tad less glamorous but very comfortable and cozy. The price of the two boats is very similar and it is difficult to say which is the nicest looking boat, both being beautiful.
What makes the difference between the two is the Solaris 50 being a true production boat with a very high built quality and the Ice 52 being a more customized boat regarding its building. It can be built the same way as the Solaris, with infusion techniques, vinylester resins and sandwich with a foam core, using some carbon as reinforcement but it can also be built using more carbon or can be a full carbon boat.
I had the luck to have the boat shown to me not by a dealer but by someone from the shipyard that knew a lot about boat building and knew exactly how the Ice 52 was built and the differences regarding the use of the different materials. Soon he had taken out all the floors to explain, with evident satisfaction, how the boat was built and how the structure was an integral part of the hull. All versions have a similar structural strength, with better materials allowing for less weight.
I have to say that I was convinced. Sure if I had to chose between the Solaris and the Ice, I would dig much more but I was truly impressed with what I saw and a bit surprised with the know how on a new shipyard. Later I understood from where that expertise came: the only new thing about the shipyard is them building their own boat because before that they had been building high tech big yachts mostly for Vallicelli and Felci. The list is impressive. http://www.iceyachts.it/the-shipyard/
The Ice 52 is a Felci design, not very beamy but with all beam pulled back. The hull design and proportions are not very different from the ones of the Solaris 50 (Soto Acebal), both have a big B/D ratio, having in account the deep draft, that is similar in both, (between 2.5 and 2.8m) and the main difference has to do with weight, that due to the high tech built and carbon use is less on the Ice 52.
While the Solaris 50 has a displacement of 14.2T, the Ice 52, depending on the building materials, has a displacement between 12.5T and 10.9T and that, in what regards performance (especially on light winds) can make a big difference. On that German test sail (Segeln), with the heavier boat, with just a F3 they were sailing at over 9K, meaning this is an easy 9k speed boat.
Regarding price, it seems not exaggerated. The Solaris 50 seems to me attractively priced, for the quality and the Ice 52, being bigger, lighter, with a more high tech built, costs about the same and therefore the Ice 52 is even more interestingly priced.
Both boats cost around 600 000 euros, even if the standard price is a bit less. Both can be equipped with a full button sailing system (with a manual backup) and that will make them even more expensive. The one tested by the German magazine costs 705 000 euros, including VAT. I would say that for a powerful boat like this to be sailed solo or by a couple, the electric and hydraulic help makes sense.
These are the conditions that many sailors, in several different groups, have been experiencing. It has been a hard Vendee Globe, as if this race was not already hard enough!!! Maybe the one that expressed it better was Alan Roura, one of the sailors on a group faraway from the leaders: "We started the survival mode. There is lots of wind, lots of sea and the boat pounds a lot. I have to keep the speed or everything will be blow apart.
The Indian Ocean is the devil of the seas. You have to fight every day. It's winter. For three days I have very difficult conditions. It's mentally challenging. we have all disconnected our brains. We are trying to keep everything in one piece and salvage our boats.
It is very hard.
We were prepared for this race but you never know what will happen next. It is impossible to have a minimum of comfort. Eating is impossible, we sleep wet. Even to open the door of the boat it's complicated because we go a lot under water.
I hope to be soon out of this. I will drink a drop of rum to celebrate when the weather improves. We work a lot between gybes and strategies to avoid losing too much, face to others.
Soon we will have 50 knots. I'm pretty happy to be with Enda and Rich. It helps to know that we are not alone.
Right now, I have 38 knots of wind. The wind is quite variable, it can go to 43 knots and it is at almost at 90 ° angle. The sea is very nasty and short. I will go North to have the wind downwind. The file shows 40 knots, so we will have close to 50 knots. It will be very difficult. We must anticipate. I hope to eat something and rest because I didn't sleep on the last ten hours.
To make things harder the autopilot malfunctions, from time to time and I have to go outside with a mask and a hood to reset it. It's freezing cold. We are here for the job but if we had not to go outside, it would be a lot better. I have three reefs and a J3. If this continues I'll have to put the storm jib. Normally, this is something you do not want to do when you're in survival mode. This is the last resort to keep the boat speed. For the moment the boat manages well the wind, I am quite fast in the fleet. "
Even very experienced, top solo skippers seem frightened, look at the expression of Jean le Cam, on first movie, when he stand up to show us how it is outside.
Storms apart, back on the race, we can see that Armel, the leader, on non foiling conditions, with variable weather systems and lighter winds (involving a lot of changes in course and routing decisions) wins every day some miles over Alex.
He has now a 385nm advantage. A lot of routing work, for the ones on the lead of the race and routing has a fundamental importance regarding speed on these conditions, that will continue like this till near the horn.
Regarding the 3rd place, finally Beyou overtook Meilhat. Meilhat's boat is the last year winner of the Vendee and the fastest boat of the last generation.
Meilhat and his team decided not to modify it with foils, estimating, like Riou, that on a design that was not designed as a foil boat, the adding of the new foils would not bring an overall significant advantage.
Curiously on Beyou's boat his team followed the opposite direction and added new foils to their boat. Beyou's boat was the one that finished second last year (then Armel's boat), just a slightly older design from the same NA. Last year was almost as fast (or as fast) as the one from Meilhat.
It is very interesting to compare the overall performance of both boats.
The strong points and weak points are different and I would not be surprised to see Meilhat going faster than Beyou on the lighter winds they will experience ahead. But then on those conditions routing is fundamental for boat speed and in what regards that, even if Melhiat has an excellent record as an offshore solo racer, that record cannot be compared with the one from Beyou, the 3 times winner of "La Solitaire du Figaro", two times French solo offshore champion, that curiously was also a multihull 60ft champion, back in 2005.
He is very motivated to make a good result on this race because even if he has won the last IMOCA transat, just before this race, he never finished the Vendee and he is already on his third one. He had to abandon on the two previous editions, one with keel problems, other with rig problems.
A word for Ruyant, that continues to win over everybody, including the first. His confidence has been growing and even if he sails a boat from a previous generation, an older boat if compared with the ones ahead, he manages to sail at the same pace or faster. A pity that confidence not to be there since the beginning of the race. That and the problems he experienced on the boat puts him at a long distance from the first. He seems to be in a great mood however, Reggae and all 😉
This menacing looking thing is a satellite photo and the red and white boats are Beyou and Meilhat, that have a good reason to sail as fast as they can, trying to go faster that monster of a front that is advancing towards them. But I believe it goes faster than what they can go. Beyou has sent a message regarding how things look viewed from his boat:
That front brings with it winds over 60k and huge seas. Well, they have to look it on the bright side, if all goes well, that big storm will make them win a lot of miles over the two first. Easy to say from my chair LOL.
Regarding the ones that were in trouble yesterday, they all managed to bring their boats intact out of the worst of the storm, being Le Cam the one that played better, losing less time, with his strategy of going slowly keeping the worst of the storm ahead. Jean-Pierre Dick decided to make a tour around Tasmania, losing a lot of miles with that but staying safe. He was filmed passing on the Bass strait.
Yann Ellies took the harder decision and slowed down the boat almost to a stop, heaving to and waiting the storm to pass. Jean-Pierre commented that psychologically he would not be able to do that and that's why he preferred keeping sailing, even if he lose more time.
Yann said about him and the storm:
"When I came out of the depression center, 36-48 hours ago, the wind was not too strong, but at some point, there was a large squall with winds over 50 knots. Then I started to became afraid and I chose to heave to. I stayed like that for a while but when I saw that Jean continued to advance, I told myself that I had to go on. Since then I sail with 40 knots average wind and violent squalls, on a big sea.
This morning, I got knocked down by a wave. It stressed me a bit because according to the files, I had not yet gone through the biggest seas and the worst of it. But I had a good surprise and recently the wind began to diminish and the seas stopped growing...
I even got scared, I admit, because when I saw the fury of nature unleashed like this around me and increasing in strength and power, I felt really small. I think the worst is behind now and I feel better, but it is not already over.
We talk about survival conditions in sailing when one stops trying to go from point A to point B and is just trying to position his boat the better he can to survive the state of the sea and the intensity of the wind, trying not to break the boat or capsize.
The IMOCA, the type of boats that are racing here, are one of the most seaworthy boats around, 60ft, huge static stability and even better dynamic stability. We had seen Armel and Alex crossing a storm slowing their boats to just around 16k.
But the state of the sea that caught these sailors has no comparison, this is not only a storm, but a huge one with waves over 10m and gust winds over 70K. The storm completely blocked the way to three sailors, extending itself between Tasmania and the ice line on the South.
They are among the best solo sailors in the world and took different strategies to try to pass the big storm: Jean Le Cam decided to go more to the South, were the wind seemed less, going slowly and letting the storm go ahead of him, Jean-Pierre Dick decided to go extremely North, by the Bass strait, turning around Tasmania, running away and Yann Elies decided for the shorter way, facing the storm.
Probably he did not expect the conditions to be so bad because facing it and not run away from it proved to be a bad call: For more than 24 hours he is doing almost no way, with an average of 2.1k speed and on the last 4 hours, even worse, doing only 1.7k. He is maintaining the boat stationary to the wind and waves, trying to maintain it on one piece and not capsizing. They only do this in absolute extreme situations because the dynamic stability of these boats is better with the boat moving.
I hope all turns well for him. He his in this situation for more than 24 hours and he is yet on the middle of the storm, with many hours ahead till be able to resume racing.
The other two seem to have taken much better options, maybe the smartest was Le Cam. He is doing about 13k, controlling the advance of the storm and going as slow as needed to maintain the storm ahead.
Jean-Pierre Dick was also caught by the storm, but not on the middle, since he was already running away from it sailing North. He managed to make way very slowly, through the night, to North, averaging less than 5K, but he seems to be out of the worst of it now, going for the Bass strait at over 8k and increasing speed.
If we look at the general picture for the next days we will see that it is not only these three that will get a lot of nasty weather and some major storms. Trying to go as fast as they can, they go sailing at really low latitudes, looking for big winds. These guys are really storm chasers. Look at the map and see all those storms on their course and how the weather is "all green" at higher latitudes.
The ones that say that cats are ugly never saw this one. Surely, if small, the central cabin can be out of proportion, but this one has the right size to make all proportions right: What a magnificent sailboat!!!!
Why French? Because not only Gunboat was bought by the French company "Grand Large" (Allures, Garcia, Outremer, Gunboat) as it is now designed by VPLP, one of the French top NA cabinets.
Very little is known yet about the boat, that will be probably a carbon one, except what the images show, a design that cuts with the "classical" look of older models but also with the "aquarium" look of the newer ones. A true beautiful design, a future classic.
They say it is a "carbon fiber reinforced Vinylester". It is hard to understand what they mean: Vinylester is the resin and I don't know what is reinforced, certainly not the carbon, or the vinylester. I have talked to them and they say it has a sandwich carbon deck and hull, but their information is not clear on the specifications. I had already posted about the Arcona 465 here: http://interestingsailboats.blogspot.pt/2015/10/arcona-465-carbon-great-performance.html
And that's about what I have to say critically about this boat...off course the style as the interior are conservative but that is a personal taste. There is nothing of conservative regarding the sail performance and in what regards stability besides an obviously good one in what regards stiffness and sail power this boat will have a very good final stability due to a big B/D ratio (40%) on a keel with 2.5m of draft (even if not a better performance torpedo keel).
The price is very interesting, for such a light boat with lots of carbon: 410 000 euro without VAT, about the same price of a Lagoon 42.
The Arcona 465 Carbon was tested recently by Pip Hare for the magazine Yachting world and she, that is a racing sailor, says only good things about the yacht. No doubt that she knows what she talks about in what regards sailing, but the way she says it, well, it could be better LOL.
