Sébastien Simon has clawed his way back into contention in the IMOCA class, after a lonely spell stuck to the north of the fleet threatened to derail his Route du Rhum campaign aboard Groupe Dubreuil - Air Caraïbes.
The Frenchman was down in 17th place last Thursday. He's since fought his way back into the top ten and now has Maxime Sorel's Vaincre la Mucoviscidose, currently sixth, firmly in his sights.
"It's going fast, I feel like I've got the star in Mario Kart," Simon said. "I'm overtaking competitors one after another. The boat is going well apart from a few small watertightness issues which don't make life easy on board. Overall, everything was very damp and it was starting to become not very pleasant!"
"Groupe Dubreuil - Air Caraïbes has behaved pretty well regardless," he said. "I had 45 knots of wind and six metres of sea. It's quite impressive, but in the end it's manageable and that's quite reassuring for the Vendée Globe."
"This morning I had a bit more air as a small ridge passed through. I was able to air the boat out a little, everything dried pretty quickly. I finally feel human again... even though I ate a meal sitting on the floor with my feet jammed against a bulkhead! Anyway, temperatures have really warmed up. Since this morning I've even been hot, I've taken off the jumpers. You can feel we've changed atmosphere and that's just as well!"
"We're going to take one last depression before arriving in Guadeloupe," Simon said. "There are four days of sea left and still a few competitors to overtake. It's not over! Even though the frustration of the start is obviously still there, because I'm not proud of myself, I'm going to keep fighting right to the end!"
