DAILY RACE REPORT – DAY 1 – Francesca Clapcich and Will Harris have made an excellent start to the 17th edition of the Transat Café L’OR from Le Havre to Martinique, which has served up a classic tough first night in the English Channel. 11th Hour Racing set off under grey skies off Le Havre on Sunday and has been consistently in the top third of the 18-strong IMOCA fleet as the leading boats smashed their way to windward into heavy seas and a gusty north-westerly wind. During a long and cold first night, Francesca and Will rotated their on-watch duties every hour as their VPLP-designed foiler made its way first northwest, up to the English south coast at Portland Bill, and then southwest towards Ushant. At all times the boat was well up with the leading group, ranging from sixth place to as high as third as the fleet continued to run the gauntlet of a weather system that produced gusts of over 40 knots. At one point Francesca sent a brief update from a dark cockpit with the instruments showing 15.3 knots of boatspeed and a true wind speed of 40.7 knots. She sounded focused but very much in her element as she tackled the first challenging miles of her first race co-skippering the boat that she will race in the next Vendée Globe. “Hi everybody from 11th Hour Racing,” she said. “Just clearing the English Channel. The average wind speed in the last few moments is 33 knots – err, it’s quite sporty with a big sea state. We are bouncing around a lot but everything is good on board. We will try to get some rest – so now it’s my turn to take care of the boat and Will is getting well-deserved rest. We are going to do that every hour, making sure that the boat is good and monitoring everything.” At that point 11th Hour Racing was hit by a breaking wave and Francesca paused. “Big wave! But everything is good,” she said as she signed off. This morning at 8.00 the ranking shows 11th Hour Racing 21.6 miles behind leaders Sam Goodchild and Loïs Berrehar on MACIF Santé Prévoyance, who are followed by Allagrande MAPEI in second position (+8.6), Charal in third (11.2) and then Elodie Bonafous and Yann Eliès in fourth place on Association Petits Princes-Queguiner. Elodie and Yann are just a couple of miles ahead of Francesca and Will who were around 10 miles ahead of the sixth-placed boat – Bureau Vallée skippered by Louis Burton and Clement Commagnac. Up ahead, there is still some tough windward work to come before the breeze moderates and the wind angle improves after Ushant. Then there will be a light air passage on the way to Cape Finisterre, before the leading boats start to come under the influence of a deep low pressure system currently centred to the east-southeast of the Azores. You can be sure that Will and Francesca will be studying it relentlessly as they plot their way south and west towards the sunshine of the trade winds. This morning Will provided another brief video update showing a grey sea at dawn with white horses at the end of a largely sleepless night. “Good morning from 11th Hour Racing,” he said. “It was a super-bouncy night for us – very rough – we are just about to go round the corner of Ushant in the next hour or two. Nice to have a bit of daylight but, as you can see, it’s pretty wet and wild. We’ve had to be taking reefs and setting sails, making sure we keep the boat nice and safe, but I think we’ve done a nice job of it so far – fingers crossed.” Ed Gorman |
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