Thibaut Vauchel-Camus is closing in on race leader Basile Bourgnon in the Ocean Fifty class, but a stubborn patch of light wind near Guadeloupe is turning the finish into a nerve-wracking standoff.
The skipper of Solidaires En Peloton by Delanchy is hunting down the leader with his sheet gripped between his teeth. As the fleet nears the finish, it is the calms, not the competition, causing the real headache.
"It's hyper exciting to be closing back in on Basile," Vauchel-Camus said. "We knew there'd be a big slowdown, with a pretty uncertain zone. In these conditions, I'd rather be the hunter than the hunted! But right now, I don't feel like I've got the right cards to make progress. It's really hard to get any sense of time passing. I've had to roll and unroll the gennaker six or seven times in half an hour!"
"I tell myself each little puff can carry us to the next one, towards where we want to go," he said. "In this phase, the smallest start can create a big gap, especially with boats that go this fast. You can close right back in on a rival, but you can also watch them vanish in no time at all."
"In fifteen hours, I think I've only covered about thirty miles. It's a completely different dance now," Vauchel-Camus said. "I even fell asleep at the helm earlier. I sort of collapsed, so I went and lay back down for half an hour. It's been almost three days now where I've only slept half an hour a day. Physically, it's starting to get tough. These are machines that are becoming physically demanding to get moving again, with big sails. It's not like we only left the day before yesterday! We've just crossed the Atlantic at a crazy speed, only to end up almost glued in place, unable to even manage a decent average over half a day."
Asked about the 2022 battle between Erwan Le Roux and Quentin Vlamynck, he pointed instead to the strange shift in rhythm after an express Atlantic crossing. "We know that around Basse-Terre on the Rhum there can be calms. But usually it's localised, over a few dozen miles, and less than a night's wait. Here, it's been twenty-four hours of fighting in light airs and we're not even in Guadeloupe yet. It's really unusual."
Vauchel-Camus revealed that Bourgnon lost his J1, a critical sail fixed to the rigging that cannot simply be swapped out without work up the mast, after the tropical depression swept through the fleet.
"It handicaps him, for sure. But the guy doesn't let himself get knocked down!" he said, recalling Bourgnon's emotional message congratulating Tom Laperche on social media after a brutal day that saw his lead disappear along with a key sail.
"I think he's found better spirits since. But all this brings us back to both the magic and the violence of our sport. There are favourites, leaders, reversals, mistakes, bad luck... Nothing is written. After eight days at sea, a transat can still completely restart on the eighth day and be decided on the ninth!"
