The Mediterranean has a long memory, and the Ocean Race fleet is being reminded of it once more. Paprec Arkéa tore through the Strait of Gibraltar at 30 knots, looking every bit like a boat with the leg already won. By the following dawn, skipper Yoann Richomme and his crew were ghosting along at barely a knot, stranded offshore while Biotherm and Holcim-PRB threaded inside them and pulled clear.
Richomme’s disbelief was clear: “The fan just completely turned off. We went from 25 knots to 4 knots in 10 seconds.”
The Med has told this story before. In 2008, Ericsson 4 and Puma sat becalmed in the Strait of Gibraltar and watched rivals drift past within eyesight. In 2015, MAPFRE went from hero to zero within an hour of rounding Ibiza. This sea has a particular talent for punishing leaders, and it has done so again.
Paul Meilhat's Biotherm made the call that mattered. Tucking close to the Spanish coast, the crew wagered on a faint thermal building inshore. The breeze was patchy and unreliable, but against a fleet barely moving it was enough. From a near standstill, Biotherm was clocking five knots while Paprec Arkéa drifted offshore.
Holcim-PRB followed the same coastal logic to secure second, though skipper Franck Cammas was careful not to call anything settled. "In these conditions, there's always a chance for the boats behind to come back," he said. Given what was unfolding behind him, that caution was well founded.
The chasers had already shown their pace. Team Malizia and Allagrande Mapei Racing had converted a 100-mile deficit at Gibraltar into a 35-mile gap by Friday morning NZT. Both boats had been scorching along at over 30 knots before running headlong into the same windless hole that swallowed Paprec Arkéa.
Allagrande Mapei Racing crew member Manon Peyre captured the mood from those high-speed moments before the calm arrived. "We had a crazy moment where we were going around 35 knots, I was hanging on there!" she recalled.
Malizia's Will Harris made clear the boat's ambitions extended well beyond a midfield result. "We're not here to fight for fourth or fifth, we're here to fight higher up," he said. For Kiwi followers of the race, Malizia's capacity to charge back through the fleet during unsettled transitions has become something of a trademark from previous editions.
For Richomme and Paprec Arkéa, there is a painful familiarity to their predicament. On Leg 1, the boat bled ground in a comparable light patch off Dover. Now, sitting fewer than 100 miles from Cartagena, their podium hopes hang by a thread. Richomme offered no false comfort about what lies ahead. "We still have several transitions to get through, it's going to be very unpredictable," he said.
The standings as of Friday midday CET, or Friday 10pm NZT, had Biotherm leading Holcim-PRB by 18 miles, with Paprec Arkéa a further six miles back. Malizia and Allagrande Mapei Racing were both closing in, Canada Ocean Racing had just cleared Gibraltar, and Team Amaala sat seventh.
The finish in Cartagena was expected to fall somewhere between 9am and 3pm NZT on Saturday, which translates to Friday night through to dawn local time in Spain. What had every appearance of a straightforward drag race to the line has, in the space of a few hours, become something far less predictable. Every breath of wind carries the potential to shuffle the order, and the Mediterranean, as ever, is in no hurry to show its hand.
