SBHOnline Trans-Atlantic Race Contest

I have it on good word that WIMCO will provide the perfect gift to the winner of our little SBHO contest. Prepare to be amazed!
 
The local team, (L’Égoïste) La Cantina St Barth, has a torn spinnaker. That won’t make their day.
 
Don't count them out yet. From what I can tell, they have repaired their Autopilot. I don't know if they have replaced their spinnaker, but they're making 13 knots and have moved up into 8th place. I'm more concerned about their decision to take a more northern route than I am about anything else. The team that I have my eye on is GUYOT Environment, currently in 10th, but who are leading the boats looking for wind farther to the south.

It will be interesting to see who has made the better choice, L'Égoïste to the north, or GUYOT to the south.

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For those who don’t follow the race closely, in the graphic, the red boat shape with the white and blue center, nearer to the top, is L'Égoïste, crewed by local SBH sailor Miguel Danet, and his teammate Eric Péron.

The pink boat shape with the white center, closer to the bottom, is GUYOT.



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Love following the TED21 race as well as learning about the individual crews. Brave folks out in the Atlantic! Don't know much about sailing, but easy to see how much hard work it is. I know that the end of the race is Gustavia, but where or what is the exact "official" arrival point?

A lurker appreciates the knowledge of you wise Forum members.

Our sixth trip is now booked for three weeks in 2022.
 
The finish line is roughly in line with the lighthouse, maybe a bit before. The finish is quite a spectacle, with local boats going out to escort the winner in.
 
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THE FIGARO 3 OF THE TRANSAT BETWEEN DE-GAULLE AND RÉPUBLIQUE & by TF A 20/05/2021 While the skippers of the Double Transat are sailing towards Saint-Barthélemy, the arrival organization is being put in place to allow eighteen boats moor in the port of Gustavia. The date of their arrival is obviously uncertain. Only estimates, always a little rough, allow us to have an idea of ​​the days which will see the Figaro 3s of the Transat in Double Concarneau - Saint-Barth cross the red buoy which symbolizes the finish line at the entrance to the port of Gustavia. Nevertheless, the race is fast and the organization is already hard at work to ensure that the best conditions will be met on D-day. Port Director and Port Security Manager, Ernest Brin displays the serenity that befits men of experience. “We haven't planned anything extraordinary,” he says before recovering. This year all the same, we will space the boats a little more in the port. Twelve will be welcomed on the Quai du Général-De-Gaulle and six others on the Quai de la République. With the foil, boats are much more fragile. If there is a small hurricane wave, we don't really know what will happen if they touch each other. Therefore, a space of six meters will separate the ships at the dock. The dream of a “match racing” at the finish For Ernest Brin, the organization evolves according to the pace of the progress of the race. Without this disturbing the activities of the port. “Traffic and commerce are not interrupted,” he recalls. “In fact, the“ cargo protocol ”could be one of the factors to be taken into account for skippers. While owners of private vessels will be asked to stay at the dock upon arrival, sailors may need to initiate some maneuvering to avoid a freighter before crossing the line. An eventuality that the port manager is considering even if, with a greedy smile, he imagines a dream ending. “It would be really nice if they arrived for the weekend,” he says. Ideally, it would be daytime, at least for the top ten. And then if there could be a little match racing on the line ... ”The perfect scenario, in short. But whatever happens, the port will be cleared to allow spectators to revel in the spectacle. "We refine as and when, but it is sure that we will leave the entire part of the Quai de la République free for the public," confirms Ernest Brin. For now, the skippers are fully immersed in their race. However, there is no doubt that in a small corner of their head they visualize the finish line and the enthusiastic crowd on the quays of Gustavia. Enough to give heart to the book.
 
Here’s a photo of Gedimat, taken just before crossing the finish line in 2016. The red-white-red cube, just in front of the headsail, is the top mark of the finish line. The bottom mark is hidden from view by vegetation at the bottom of the photo.

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Here is some commentary from three previous race winners, taken from the TED21 webpage at https://www.transatendouble.bzh/act...ain-et-de-pavant-loeil-des-anciens-vainqueurs as translated by Google. I've bolded a few key points, and added the current placement, the closest finish times, and the record finish time at the end:


Desjoyeaux, Jourdain and De Pavant: the eye of the former winners

They are part of the very closed circle of the winners of the Double Transat - Concarneau - Saint-Barthélemy. Michel Desjoyeaux, Roland Jourdain and Kito de Pavant, winners in 1992, 1994 and 1996 respectively, keep a keen eye on the progress of the skippers. For the three men of experience, one thing is certain: the current battle is undecided and will be for a long time to come. Explanations as the fleet is racing its 8th day of racing, 2000 miles from Saint-Barthélemy.

MICHEL DESJOYEAUX: "the tenors are in the place"

Forever the first. "Mich’ Desj "won in the first edition in 1992 with Jacques Caraës. "My memories of that victory are starting to go up a bit," he laughs. But that does not prevent him from following this edition and delivering a first analysis. Above all, he is delighted that “the tenors are all in the place”. “It should be noted that all the boats are still racing. And it's great that the leading pairs are so close after 8 days of racing! "

In this fight for victory, the two-time Vendée Globe winner finds that “GUYOT Environnement - Ruban Rose is well placed. The ranking favors the one in the North for the moment, but I think the South route will pay off more at the end ". He also salutes the good performance of Bretagne CMB - Performance who “was a good leader at the start and had a difficult time off the Iberian coast. Tom Laperche and Lois Berrehar had the ability to come back into the game and position themselves well. ". Finally, "Mich’desj" appreciates that the duos send videos, sounds and photos. "This is new compared to previous editions and it allows everyone to better understand what sailors live. "

ROLAND JOURDAIN: “everything remains open! "

He helped make the race a legend. It was 1993 and Roland Jourdain, with Jean Le Cam, crossed the finish line 63 seconds ahead of the duo Bertrand de Broc - Marc Guillemot. 28 years later, there are 18 of them trying to imitate them. "Bilou" follows the race, looks at what "his little comrades" are doing. He smiles: "I think we will have to take care of the condition of the buttocks on arrival! With the humidity, even downwind, there may be a lot of pimples. "

Behind the joke, the sailor insists on the “wearing” nature of the race: “on the Double Transat - Concarneau - Saint-Barthélemy, every day, every hour, every minute requires extreme concentration. You have to manage to keep your boat moving while having a fine reading of the weather ”. On the race, he admits "that there weren't really any options to get out of the pack", while praising "the very good overall level of the fleet". And he continues, “At this point it's far too early to say who's going to win. Everything remains open! "

KITO DE PAVANT: "it will be undecided until the end"

Kito de Pavant also has a great history with the Double Transat - Concarneau - Saint-Barthélemy. He won there in 2006 alongside Pietro d'Ali. He, who will start in the fall in Class40 in the Transat Jacques Vabre, follows the race on a daily basis. “It looked very tight from the start. I don't know if it's because the options are lacking or if it's because the skippers don't really dare to take options so as not to lose contact with the front-runner ". He notes that "the average speeds in the leading group are very consistent". The skipper is betting on a scenario similar to his victory or the last finish, in 2018, when 14 duos had crossed the line in 24 hours.

“I think it's going to be undecided until the finish.
It's not going to be played out much. You will have to always be on the lookout, take the wind shifts even when they are not clear ". Kito de Pavant would also like to add a point of clarification: "For a long time we thought that the trade winds were a steady wind when it is very unstable. And the hotter it is, the more unstable it is. The skippers must be extremely vigilant because a tilt of 20 to 30 degrees can waste a few handfuls of seconds which will be expensive at the finish. "

UPDATE ON THE RACE - The lateral gap is growing

After 8 days of racing, the uncertainty is therefore still great at 2000 miles from Saint-Barthélemy. The rest is Corentin Douguet, associated with Tanguy Le Turquais (Queguiner - Innovéo), who explains: “it's downwind under spinnaker - that's great - and battles with the Sargassum and it's less nice ”. And he continues: "the Sargassum was invited much earlier than expected and this is not good news". Corentin and Tanguy are part of the 14 leading duos who are taking part in less than 50 miles on the orthodromy [Great Circle route, the shortest route from their current location to the finish].

On the other hand, the lateral gap increases further and stands at more than 120 miles between Éric Péron and Miguel Danet (L'Egoïste - Cantina St Barth) who persist in the North and the duo Pierre Leboucher and Thomas Rouxel (GUYOT Environnement - Ruban Rose) which are located the most southerly. Today, we can also see that MonAtoutEnergie.fr (Arthur Hubert - Clément Commagnac) is back in the game among the leaders. Conditions for the next few hours should remain between 15 and 18 knots although the trade winds may be unstable. "Until the West Indian region, the situation is not clear, analyzes Tom Laperche (CMB - Bretagne Performance). The last week is going to be very open! "



Here are the placements as of Noon ET today, including the distance behind the lead boat:


  1. Région Normandie (Alexis Loison / Guillaume Pirouelle)
  2. Skipper Macif (Pierre Quiroga / Erwan Le Draoulec) à 2 nm
  3. (L’égoiste) - Cantina St Barth (Eric Péron / Miguel Danet) à 10,9 nm
  4. GUYOT Environnement – Ruban Rose (Pierre Leboucher / Thomas Rouxel) à 12,1 nm
  5. Bretagne – CMB Performance (Tom Laperche / Loïs Berrehar) à 13,8 nm
  6. DEVENIR (Violette dorange / Alan Roberts) à 19,5 nm
  7. Quéguiner - Innovéo (Tanguy Le Turquais / Corentin Douguet) à 23,5 nm
  8. CYBELE VACANCES TEAM PLAY TO B (Pep Costa / Will Harris) à 28,1 nm
  9. Teamwork (Nils Palmieri / Julien Villion) à 28,4 nm
  10. Groupe Gilbert (Fabien Delahaye / Anthony Marchand) à 32 nm
  11. Breizh Cola (Gildas Mahé / Tom Dolan) à 32,1 nm
  12. Gardons la vue (Martin Le Pape / Yann Eliès) à 33,6 nm
  13. Bretagne – CMB Océane (Elodie Bonafous / Corentin Horeau) à 41,5 nm
  14. MonAtoutEnergie.fr (Arthur HUBERT / Clément Commagnac) à 46,8 nm
  15. RLC Sailing (Estelle Greck / Laurent Givry) à 188,9 nm
  16. ERISMA GROUPE SODES – Fondation TARA OCEAN (Jérôme Samuel / Nicolas Salet) à 265,8 nm
  17. INTERACTION (Yannig Livory / Erwan Livory) à 387 nm
  18. KRISS-LAURE (Nicolas Bertho / Romuald Poirat) à 541,3 nm


The closest finish was in 2004, when the first and second place boats were seperated by 53 seconds.

  1. Jean Le Cam et Roland Jourdain sur Sill plein fruit - France III en 20 j 20 h 34 min 26 s
  2. Bertrand de Broc et Marc Guillemot sur Laiteries Le Gall en 20 j 20 h 35 min 29 s

The fastest finish time was in 2018.
Adrien Hardy et Thomas Ruyant sur AGIR Recouvrement en 18 j 11 h 48 min 22 s (8,77 nœuds)
 
There have been big changes in positions. The race has a new leader, GUYOT Environnement – Ruban Rose. The southern route has, at least for now, proven to be the faster route. The local team, (L’égoiste) - Cantina St Barth, in 3rd place yesterday, has fallen to 14th place.

As with every Transat race, a few more boats have had issues. Erisma - Groupe SODES - Fondation Tara Océan broke a forestay on their mast, but are still in the race (16th place). Bretagne - CMB Océane (12th place),had a carabiner break on their large spinnaker halyard, causing the sail to fall into the water "like a dead leaf". After recovering the sail, Elodie Bonafous climbed the mast to retrieve the halyard.

Here is a graphic showing the relative position of the boats. The leader, GUYOT Environnement – Ruban Rose, the bottom boat, is the pink boat shape with a white center. The local team, (L’égoiste) - Cantina St Barth, the top boat, is the red boat shape with the white and blue center.

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Here is a graphic showing the bigger picture. Note that the lead boat is 1611nm from SBH as of 13:00ET. If they continue at the same speed, I expect that the lead boat will be 1000nm from SBH sometime on Monday, at which time the contest will be open to entries.

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There is a lot of information available on the Cartography screen, which can be found at https://www.transatendouble.bzh/#cartographie It may be confusing, or it may be helpful when picking your entry.

You can zoom in and out by placing your cursor in the map section, and using your mouse’s scroll wheel. You can move the map around by placing your cursor in the map section, holding down the left mouse key, and moving your mouse around. You can scroll through the list of teams on the left, and use your scroll wheel to move up and down.

There is useful information in the list of teams. For each team, the image on the left cycles through images of both team members, and of the boat. If you click on the + in the lower right corner of the image, larger images and more detailed biographies come up (in French, Google Translate is a good tool for non-French speakers.). Clicking on the + again it will close the popup window.

There is useful information to the right of the images. This includes the current placement of a team, the team name, and the names of the team crew. Below that is the time that the information was last updated (Paris time, deduct 6 hours for ET), the heading in degrees, and the speed in knots.the bottom line shows the distance to the finish line in nautical miles(nm), and the distance behind the leader, also in nm.

Map side, click your mouse on any given boat shape, and a popup with more detailed information will appear, including the hour of the update, distance to the finish, distance behind the leader, and how much that has changed since the last update. Below that is a table showing current statistics, statistics over the last 4 hours, and over the last 24 hours. Cap is the heading, Vitesse is the speed in knots, VMC is Velocity Made Good Over Course (don’t ask, lol), And Distance is the distance sailed in the last 4 and 24 hours.

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Or you can ignore all of the above by picking an entry based on the team name/sponsors, the colors of the boat, or whatever you like. For example, GUYOT Environment - Ruban Rose has the French equivalent of Pink Ribbon as one of their sponsors, and L’Égoïste - Cantina St Barth has La Cantina as one of their sponsors. Information on each of the teams can be found at https://www.transatendouble.bzh/equipages
 
Ana. Maybe soon they will change the official start date. 7 years seems like it is a long run, not a small blip.
 
The necessary jibes have begun. The previous track for the entire fleet would have brought them to the Carolinas. They’ve all decided to “turn on the left turn signal” and start jibing south. I expect that we may see a bit of a zigzag over the next few days, always getting closer to SBH.

GUYOT Environment - Ruban Rose, who bet on the South, is still in the lead, by over 15nm. L’Égoïste - Cantina St Barth, who bet on the North, is now 90nm back - but don’t count them out.

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The boats first started running into sargassum yesterday, I think. Sargassum wrapped around your keel or your foils, adds drag, slowing you down. They have a plan for that. Here’s some video from earlier today.
 
More from earlier today on the race’s webpage, as translated by Google:

After several days of progressing straight through the trade winds, things got busy in the leading group. The 14 duos that make it up took advantage of a change in the wind to jibe through the night. Each is consolidating its strategy between the supporters of the North route and those of the South route. Only 65 miles separate them in the standings and now nearly 170 miles sideways.


For several days now, they had gotten used to a long straight, a highway in the heart of the Atlantic where the trade winds offered a perfect corridor to set sail for Saint-Barthélemy. But on this Sunday morning, everything seems messy on the mapping for the leading group. This is in no way the consequences of a festive night: it will have been very studious. All tried to make the most of a shift in the wind, from Northwest to East-Northeast, further asserting their options.


Even more marked options


Thus, among the supporters of the South option, Pierre Leboucher and Thomas Rouxel (GUYOT Environnement - Ruban Rose), who had taken control of the classification the day before, have set course for the South again. They were imitated by Tom Laperche and Lois Berrehar (Bretagne CMB - Performance), by Pep Costa and Will Harris (CYBELE VACANCES TEAM PLAY TO B), by Gildas Mahé and Tom Dolan (Breizh Cola), by Martin Le Pape and Yann Eliès (Keep sight) and all to the North by Eric Peron and Miguel Danet (L'Egoiste - Cantina St Barth).


At the same time, Alexis Loison and Guillaume Pirouelle (Normandy Region) as well as Pierre Quiroga and Erwan Le Draoulec (Skipper Macif) who are part of the band of northerners, confirm by heading further north. Pierre Quiroga explains: “Two main options have emerged: to go south and have a fresh wind or come and play with the edges of the high pressure to find a wind angle favorable to the road to Saint-Barthélemy. We chose the 2nd option… We will see what the crossing with the starboard fleet will give! "


A fleet stretched 650 miles apart


At the race direction, Yann Chateau observed for the first time "a kind of point of no return": "until last night, the routings always indicated that the northerners were going to head south again. Now, they are reporting a northern route, which should increase the lateral gap at the end of the race. "


Behind, Estelle Greck and Laurent Givry (RLC Sailing) are close to 110 miles from the lead. At ERISMA GROUPE SODES - TARA OCEAN Foundation, Jérôme Samuel and Nicolas Salet, who had been victims of the breakage of their forestay the day before, seem to have regained a substantial average speed (10 knots this morning). “We thought about giving up,” recognized the two men who made two support halyards. Finally, Yannig and Erwan Livory (Interaction) are around 40 miles behind while Nicolas Bertho and Romual Poirat (Kriss-Laure) bring up the rear almost 650 miles from the lead.


______


A word from the edge of the night


Pierre Quiroga and Erwan Le Draoulec (Skipper Macif):


“It is not idle on board the Skipper Macif boat! It makes life really rough for us. We suffer from discomfort. Impossible to take a shower, difficult to change ... But we have a good laugh and we keep our spirits up! Fortunately, there is an emotional side to our duo. The Transat in Double Concarneau-Saint Barthélemy will be difficult morally and physically until the end! For 2 days, our main objective has been to find an acceptable level of fatigue. So we go on naps while the other on the bridge fights with Sargassum present far too early in this race! "
 
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