Vendee Globe 2020

[ant1]

Passage times at cape Leeuwin longitude, does not directly reflect race standings because if you're more to the north at that longitude you're behind those who are more to the south, (should be updated regularly):

https://www.vendeeglobe.org/fr/actualites/21000/cap-leeuwin-les-temps-de-passage

1 -  Charlie Dalin, Apivia

2 - Thomas Ruyant, LinkedOut at 3h 11min

3 - Yannick Bestaven, Maître CoQ  at 3h 20min

4 - Benjamin Dutreux, OMIA at 13h 25min

5 - Damien Seguin, Groupe APICIL at 14h 24min

6 - Jean Le Cam, Yes We Cam ! at 14h 47min

7- Louis Burton, Bureau Vallée 2 at 16h 59min

8 - Boris Hermann, SeaExplorer at 20h 43min

9 - Isabelle Joschke, MACSF at 23h 43min

It was all super close at cape Leeuwin... unbelievable... 9 boats within 24 hours... crazy

 

[stief]

Graphics sure make these buoys look like hazards to navigation. Clearly they're not, with narrow profiles that only surface for 30 mins of their mostly deep down 10 day cycle.


https://twitter.com/argo_france/status/1338502440640012290?s=20

 

[canstead]

Access and exposure is a two way street.

Pounding the pavement chasing sponsorship funding experience doesn't ooze from your post. 

Fair point, you know more about that.  Why not give Alex a call see if he can use some of your advice, he's clearly never managed to get any sponsorship funding together... oh, no, wait.....

 

[staysail]

Fair point, you know more about that.  Why not give Alex a call see if he can use some of your advice, he's clearly never managed to get any sponsorship funding together... oh, no, wait.....

Most of the French, and other, skippers have, over the years had to find quite a few different title sponsors, so this activity, presentation of project etc. must be something they are well practiced at. I guess Alex must have had others apart from HB during his career but for quite a few years HB is the only main name sponsor which comes to mind.  With HB signed up one wonders how much actual selling Alex has had to do over the years compared with the others.

 

[minca3]

Regarding HB rudder, I really don't understand why some footage hasn't been realeased, as, if it what happened, that footage clearly exists (just for shoreteam exchanges for instance).

because when you release video/photo material of damaged parts the question to "ok, and how did this happen" gets even louder, you can't show the damage with no annotation.
And it appears that for whatever reason they don't want to comment on it. Or they are still analyzing what happened and provide the info later when they are ready.

 

[TheDragon]

Sam leaving Cape Town, photo from my sister. She says they are sailing around just outside of Table Bay, presumably checking things out.

 

[TheDragon]

Glad to see she remains shown on HB tracker page at least, might be on her way now?

 

[Miffy]

Convincing interested parties to continue during a disappointment is probably more of a priority - plus without knowing the cash flow situation, you're looking at a boat that needs to be repaired/dockage paid for/retrieved not to mention the foil & storage they have to pay for from 2016 Hugo Boss. ATR's near term & longterm challenges are rather diff from that of initiatives coeur or charal. 

 

[Your Mom]

Sam leaving Cape Town, photo from my sister. She says they are sailing around just outside of Table Bay, presumably checking things out.

She's showing as a ghost boat on ATR's tracker.  That's nice.  She'll probably pass a few unless she treats it as a casual cruise.

 

[carcrash]

If we don't see this version of Hugo Boss again, as in it's taken out back and chopped up then the POS hypothesis makes some sense.  

I think it is not really appropriate to call any IMOCA that breaks in the VG a POS, any more than calling an F1 car a POS if it breaks down. The intent is to push the boundaries, which means boundaries must get crossed.

Many people have the entirely mistaken impression that engineering works from first principles of physics, and it never does. I mean never. QED is never, ever used, and that is the foundation of physics. All engineering is using rules of thumb. These rules of thumb only apply within limited domains of vast experience, such as how thick steel plates should be for container ships. They do not apply to carbon structures.

The rules for carbon structures are not the same as the rules for other materials: whereas the rules for glass are based on the observation that strength is correlated to the cosine of the off angle load, with carbon -- due to the dramatically higher brittleness of carbon, the lack of stretch before failure, which is the inability for load to spread through a carbon structure -- the strength is observed to fall off by cosine SQUARED, or very rapidly with increasing load off-axis of the fibers. Rules for metal are different yet again, due to the fact nearly all metals are insensitive to direction of load. Adding coring, or flanges, or stress risers to the problem just makes things that much less precise.

Add the enormous dynamic effects of crashing the bow after UFO impact, followed by momentum and still full sail force driving the bow underwater, and one is very far from the limited domains of vast experience.

One might think engineering is predicting: one predicts this boat design will make it around the world at record speed. Well, its like predicting the weather. An extremely experienced design team, like AT's, can be consistently close, but never precise, and sometimes very much incorrect. The reason: mathematically, its called chaos. Chaotic systems are those where aspects of the future can be reasonably well predicted, but in general (outside of limited ranges of variable values and time into the future) we can predict reasonably well only within ranges, or patterns, approximately what can be expected, not specific solutions. All that is required for chaos to appear is state and non-linearity. State means what happens next is dependent on what happens before. Sailing certainly has a lot of state! Non-linearities include things that change faster or slower than a linear change, such as lift which is a function of the square of speed. Squaring something is non-linear: 2 times faster makes 4 times the lift, while 4 times faster makes 16 times the lift, certainly non-linear. Therefore, if we are talking about sailboats, we are talking about chaotic systems, which means any prediction that any given boat will make it around the world is un-certain.

 

[ant1]

Imho Alex Thompson has nothing to prove, it was his fifth VG, he finished two of them, respect. His best finish so far was 2nd, just like Ellen Mac Arthur, Loick Peyron, Jean Le Cam... that's a group of pretty legendary sailors.

I don't really question Alex Thomson's fighting spirit. If he says his boat is unfit to finish, so be it. It broke down, he tried to repair it, we didn't have much news on hull integrity after that but my speculation is that the repairs weren't enough, you can only do so much out at sea. Then there was the rudder thing, whatever it was.. the last straw.

Just my two cents

 

[Snowden]

Imho Alex Thompson has nothing to prove, it was his fifth VG, he finished two of them, respect. His best finish so far was 2nd, just like Ellen Mac Arthur, Loick Peyron, Jean Le Cam... that's a group of pretty legendary sailors.

I think that's right. Setting aside the German connection, he is closer to an Andy Murray than a Tim Henman...

 

[Bebmoumoute]

Imho Alex Thompson has nothing to prove, it was his fifth VG, he finished two of them, respect. His best finish so far was 2nd, just like Ellen Mac Arthur, Loick Peyron, Jean Le Cam... that's a group of pretty legendary sailors.

These sailors have actually won some races though...

 

[ant1]

These sailors have actually won some races though...

Of course, those three are incredible sailors.

 

[WLIS Jibing]

In the latest sked, Yannick has snuck past Ruyant and he is only 65 nm behind Dalin.  (This does not take into account any redress YB will receive.)  Extremely exciting race!!

 

[despacio avenue]

Piss off ambulance chaser.. I got in first.

I might not be qualified but I know the UN Convention on the  Law of the Sea backwards ....I'm still working on forwards.

Looking for a gif of amphibious ambulances....Dog teams swim and go in reverse.  :lol:

 

[Hitchhiker]

The three lead boats are in a strong breakaway with the weather.  Have to wonder though how much performance Linked is losing with that damaged port foil. Some very interesting days ahead.

 

[ant1]

Glad to see she remains shown on HB tracker page at least, might be on her way now?

After all she will be shown on the main tracker in phantom mode... can be good for teachers who had their class following her more particularly... there even could be extra fun in following a "ghost" ship

"Sam will go on her way under the vigilant eye of the race direction of the Vendee Globe, ready to intervene in case of problems. Initiative Coeur's track will be visible on the Vendee Globe cartography, but in "phantom" mode."

https://www.vendeeglobe.org/fr/actualites/21031/bonne-route-sam

 

[littlechay]

We were on South Georgia, on the opposite side from this iceberg, in remarkably good conditions. We visited one colony of King Penguins that had between 80,000 and 300,000 birds (depending on which expert was talking). From offshore it looked like the surface of the land was vibrating there were so many birds so close together. Don't know what the populations are like on the SW side but I assume similar.

Incorrect assumption. In comparison with the NE side there is almost nothing on the SW side. It is awesomely spectacular though. 

Also bear in mind that if this berg runs aground it will be a very long way offshore, probably not even in sight of the island It has about 70m or so sticking out of the water so around 500m below the water.... 

Both experts were probably right and you were not listening very carefully. The correct and usual way to refer to the quantity of birds in a colony is in breeding pairs i.e. the number of nests (your 80,000) but some people talk about estimates of the total number of birds; breeding pairs, plus their young, plus non-breeding birds plus juveniles not in the care of their parents (your 300,000). 

 

[stief]

The three lead boats are in a strong breakaway with the weather.  Have to wonder though how much performance Linked is losing with that damaged port foil. Some very interesting days ahead.

Thanks Hitch for that look ahead 3 days. Will watch if JLC/Damien end up more or less a day behind.

The squid/windy projection also shows the rise to the north, and has trouble with the date line