Hopes gone up in smoke but the sea rediscovered. Armel Le Cléac’h (Banque Populaire), returned to Lorient on Thursday to repair damage, left on Saturday shortly before 1 p.m. with the aim of finishing the Route du rhum, his team announced. “We want to go to the end of the story”, explained the skipper on Friday evening. Winner of the 2016/2017 Vendée Globe, he capsized after two days of racing during the 2018 Route du rhum.
Since Thursday evening, his team has been working hard to replace the boat’s daggerboard and above all to seal the impacts that the broken daggerboard had caused on the hull.
Thursday morning, less than a day after the start and when he was once again among the big favorites of the event, the skipper heard “a crack”. He could only see the damage and turn around. “There was no bad signal. It broke in two seconds. It’s hard to believe it, ”said Le Cléac’h in a press release on Friday evening. “I haven’t really realized it yet, but there is a lot of disappointment.”
Even if the race for victory and the podium is now very far ahead of him, the skipper refused to give up. “It ended badly four years ago, we lost a boat. This year, we want to complete this Route du rhum”.
Far ahead, the fight was tight between François Gabart (SVR Lazartigue) and Charles Caudrelier (Maxi Edmond de Rothschild), with Thomas Coville (Sodebo) in ambush, while the Ultims (maxi-trimarans 32 m long and 23 m wide broad) approached a new heavy weather front.