Transat Jacques Vabre
A regime of light winds and warm, humid weather will make the final miles to Itajaí difficult for the final Class 40 finishers on the Transat Jacques Vabre. Next boat to finish, due Wednesday evening, is April Deltacalor. The Les Sables d’Olonne based boat should be in this evening, with less than 20 miles to the finish at 1500hrs UTC this afternoon. Five boats are still on course. Hannah Jenner and Rob Windsor are 850 miles from the finish in 23rd place.
April Deltacalor has 19 year old Tim Darni on board as co-skipper to Lionel Regnier. He is the ‘benjamin’ of the course. The youngest sailor of the fleet is actually set to finish 400 miles ahead of his father Eric who is skipper of Ecoelec.
Four Class 40s finished over the course of late Tuesday evening. And, reaching the lower end of the fleet, each had their own mitigating stories, reasons why they had finished further down the fleet than perhaps they had hoped for when they left Le Havre 26 days ago.
Matouba (Bertrand Guillonneau – Sébastien Audigane) were always compromised after they wrapped a key spinnaker so tightly around their forestay that they had to make a technical pit stop to fix it. 12 minutes after them on the finish line, Proximedia Sauvez Mon Enfant (Denis Van Weynbergh – Jean-Edouard Criquioche) had more than their fair share of problems, not least Criquioche damaging his mouth and teeth when the bowsprit hit him in the face.
