Our Mate Alex Thomson’s Races
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Speaking of enormous trimarans, here's the Gitana Maxi. It's a 33 metre design by VPLP, who were part of the team behind Hugo Boss, and probably along the lines of what Alex wants next…
Sailing Anarchy have also posted a podcast interview with VPLP. I've not listened to it yet, but it should be interesting.
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Alex is still up front. He's pulled out his lead slightly, it's currently 96 nautical miles.
Vincent Riou has retired. He hit something with his keel, and damaged the canting mechanism. He's not confident that he can complete the race without it dropping off.
There's an interview with Mike Golding, who's done the race a few times on the Vendée website.
http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/news/16415/mike-golding-offers-his-view-of-the-2016-vendee-globe
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Go Boy…...
British skipper Alex Thomson this afternoon completed the fastest ever passage from the Vendée Globe start line to the Cape of Good Hope in the race's 27-year history. Thomson's Hugo Boss passed the famous milestone on the tip of South Africa at 1100 UTC in seventeen days, 22 hours and 58 minutes since beginning the epic solo round the world race from Les Sables d'Olonne in France.
The time obliterates the current race record for the passage of 22 days and 23 hours set by Armel Le Cléac'h in 2012, which in turn broke Vincent Riou's 2004 time of 24 days and two hours. While the Cape of Good Hope is used as the reference point for the passage in the Vendee Globe, it is not actually the most southerly point in South Africa. That title goes to Cape Agulhas, around 90 miles to the south east.
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There's an interesting snippet on the front page of Sailing Anarchy.
The biggest wildcard for the internationalization of the Vendee Globe comes from outside the race, and we hear Mark Turner, the Keith Mills/OSM contingent, and a number of different designers and builders are hard at work to determine the feasibility of the ‘Joint Strike” foiling IMOCA/Volvo Ocean Race 68-foot concept for the 2019 Vendee/2020 VOR. With OSM getting somewhat lukewarm worldwide buy-in of the Ocean Masters Series concept since its inception, the combined power of OSM, Boss, and the Volvo could really tip the international balance of IMOCA racing. You won’t have to wait long to find out where that one’s going, and we’re on the edge of our seats along with everyone else who loves ocean racing.
Sir Keith Mills is the financial backer of Alex Thomson Racing, and owner of Open Sports Management (OSM), which handles the commercial rights for the IMOCA class.
Mark Turner founded Offshore Challenges, along with a certain Dame Ellen MacArthur, and it grew into a sports management company. He's since resigned from them, and is now in charge of the Volvo Ocean Race.
The Volvo Ocean 65 is a similar design to an IMOCA 60, but is slightly larger (65 versus 60 feet in length), and designed for crewed racing. It's a one design class, whereas the IMOCAs are mostly open, the current rule stipulates a standard mast and keel.
There has been talk of running the Volvo Ocean Race in IMOCA 60s, rather than using its own class, but it wasn't followed through because it's a crewed event, whereas the Vendée is solo. But with Mills and Turner running the race organisations, I think that there's a good chance it might happen.
Plus a bigger, foiling boat would be cool.
