Multihull Fleet

The multihull fleet competing in the Transat Jacques Vabre, which left Le Havre, France on Sunday at 1250hrs, has already reached the gateway to the Atlantic. Belgacom (Nélias/Desjoyeaux) has taken the lead a brand-new trimaran and covered the English Channel in just 11 hours.

Behind, the pack is chasing hard, and Fujifilm (Peyron/Le Mignon) trails by just 0.4 miles. Back up in third place early yesterday morning was Sergio Tacchini (Fauconnier/Proffit). The new generation multihulls are dominating the leading group, as if eagerly flexing their muscles, flying towards Cape Finisterre under full gennaker. However, the proven trimaran Kingfisher-Foncia (Gautier/MacArthur) has been match racing fiercely with Sergio Tacchini, and by mid-morning had pulled ahead. The gap between the leader and 14th placed Pindar Systems (Richards/Von Koskull) is around 97 miles.

Monohull Fleet

The trio of Sill Plein Fruit (Jourdain/Le Cleac1h), Casto-Darty-But (Moloney/Turner) and Voila.fr (Gallay/De Pavant) have been within two miles of each other after round Ushant and keeping up similar speeds at around 15 – 16 knots, the top spot changing between them every two hours. Ecover (Golding /Hutchinson) is furthest to the west of the fleet but reaching speeds on a par with the leaders, if not fractionally better.

Two setbacks: Bobst Group – Armor Lux (Stamm/Riou) broached while speeding downwind under spinnaker and it took a good hour to get the boat back on course, down to sixth place. Temenos (Wavre/Paret) reported that their spinnaker dropped suddenly and went under the keel, stopping them dead for two hours. They have requested to embark a replacement spinnaker at Funchal, off Madeira. The distance between 12th placed This Time (Tolkein/Wingate) and the leader is just over 90 miles.

The battle between old and new boats wages at the top of the Open 50 fleet as well, with One Dream, One Mission (Bennett/Larsen), the infamous yellow boat, gaining a nine-mile advantage over the new 50 footer Saving (Le Youdec/Bacave).

Multihull Positions (Monday 5 November)

1 Belgacom

2 Fujifilm

3 Sergio Tacchini

Open 60 Monohull Positions

1 Sill Plein Fruit

2 Voila.fr

3 Casto – Darty – But

Open 50 Monohull Positions

1 One Dream : One Mission

2 Saving