Ocean Race: “Malizia Seaexplorer” in third place, “Biotherm” slightly ahead

Last night the field of the remaining four boats passed Kerguelen and in fact the fear of Major Kevin Escoffier of a few days ago seems to have come true: all four boats are now sailing in the same weather regime, an advantage that his team at times with nearly 700 miles has had It should be low ahead but it has slowly but surely dwindled to 436 miles. As the team expected this, ‘Holcim PRB’ has veered far south over the last few days, positioning itself between West Tasmania’s first scoring gate and the opposition. An old rule of thumb for regatta sailing, Escoffier prevents runners from slipping south with better winds.

Meanwhile, ‘Biotherm’ managed to keep its feet on the gas in the wake of ‘Holcim’, slowly but surely gaining miles on the leaders. Boris Herrmann and his crew now follow in third, but they are slowly but surely losing miles to “Biotherm,” and the gap has grown to nearly 100 miles. After tonight and this morning’s surprisingly very slow “11 o’clock”, first at 14 knots and now only 8.5 knots, Burris and his team managed to finish third. It is not yet known if the Americans were caught by a weak wind gully that follows the western edge of the depression, or if they had a technical problem. The crew had two tears in J2 and 3, and have already repaired one sail, but they may be currently using less wind for the second repair.

Race Status Today at 9:00 am go to the live tracker here

In any case, the series of technical problems does not stop, after the “Malizia Seaexplorer” team carried out the arduous task of repairing the mast and patching the sails, the team suffered yesterday from electrical charging problems. The generator is a bit finicky, it has to work when the solar panels aren’t providing any electricity when the sky is overcast and the boat is too fast for the wave generators in the stern. V-belts tear regularly. “We still have four spare belts on board, but at the moment we can only manage two loads with one belt!” Boris Hermann said yesterday. It wouldn’t be enough, so yesterday Boris and Will tried to realign the alternator so the belt wouldn’t wear out so quickly.

Meanwhile, on land in Cape Town, repair work at the Guyot Environment is in full swing. In the video yesterday, crew member Annie Loesch said the team aims to repair the damaged area in the floor between the attendant hatch and the transom within 5-7 days. The sandwich sheet with a Nomex core there had to be removed and replaced with one with a foam core, as is now done in many IMOCA’s. Only Boris Hermann’s boat had solid sheets all over the floor, because he was afraid of such jamming, which was also a frequent problem with the old “Seaexplorer”. Skipper Benjamin Dutreaux is now getting off his leg, and hopes they can sail straight to Itaji, a route that will take about 14 days.

Summary of yesterday’s organizer video.