Vendee Globe Ocean Racing, The Great Escape

Sailing their own match race into the open wilds of the Pacific, the leading duo in the Vendée Globe have begun to extend away again. But not from each other. Armel Le Cléac’h (Banque Populaire) said he could see Francois Gabart (MACIF), no more than two miles away they passed the Auckland Islands, on the radar overnight. For his part, Gabart sent home a video trying, but not wholly succeeding, to show Le Cléac’h’s sails in the distance.

The two did not hesitate as they crossed the Campbell Plateau, with the big rough seas caused by the vertiginous shelf on its western boundary. Le Cléac’h spoke of hand steering through an area where the human touch is more responsive than even these modern autopilots.
Le Cléac’h maintained the slenderest of leads – just 2.2 miles – at the 1500hrs UTC ranking. “We could see each other (Gabart) in the fog,” Le Cléac’h said. “I wanted to talk to him on the VHF, it didn’t work,but, no, I’m not mad at him or anything. I’m definitely keeping an eye on him, though.”

Denis Horeau, the race director for four of the seven editions (the first in 1989 and the last three since 2004-05), cannot remember anything like it. “Never,” he says. “There are two reasons, firstly the gates have changed the strategy and the second is that they are very similar sailors in the boats that have both been made by Michael Desjoyeaux (the only two-time winner of the race). They are getting the same weather files and they have the same conditions so it is natural they are in the same place.”