Olympic Sailing

Vendee Globe Skippers In Tow

If you have been following the Vendee Globe race round the world, there has been considerable excitement in the progress made over 88 days of racing.


Indeed, many have suffered misfortunes and challenges that characterize this race, which is of solo skippers who brave it out on the waters around the globe.

As the seventh skipper finished on 1ist of February the remaining others still battle the water and weather conditions as well as each other. For instance, Costa and Romain are close to each other, being about 45 miles apart from each other in similar positions. Both have similar boats and hence experience similar speeds in the current weather conditions. As Costa reported, the last few days have seen unstable winds that have been calm and shifty. Many squalls had come by, which made sailing a challenge.

Hence, the skippers have been kept busy in their boats as they cannot let any opportune moment go. Costa stated that he was seeing his opponent’s sails appear now and again and that helps him determine the position that he needs to be in. He is planning to stay eastwards which should give him favorable winds. As a result, he would be able to get headway in that direction as he hopes. Rich Wilson, who is in front, lost about 300 miles to this duo in the course of last week. However, he has been able to cover some of the loss while Dominique Wavre is proving quicker as he finds the trade winds favorable. Wilson is looking for regular breeze that will help him to cover the Equator, which is about a thousand miles in front. The challenge is to keep the motivation up in this region as movement is slow in this region. Most skippers admit that they expend more energy when the weather is calm as compared to when favorable wind conditions are prevalent.