The Spanish candidate in the Vendée Globe - Didac Costa - had to return to the pontoons in Les Sables-d'Olonne on the day of the start. Indeed, on 6th November 2016, he discovered an ingress of water and a fault in his electronic system, barely an hour after taking the start of the race. Forced to turn back, he was able to count on the support of the teams still on site, but also of the Sables-d'Olonne fire brigade.
After three days of intense work, the skipper of One Planet One Ocean set off again in the round the world race this Thursday 10th November at 12:40 pm. He crossed the line (between the cardinal Nouch Sud and a GPS point) a second time to rejoin his rivals. In fact he is 1,134 miles from the leaders and 770 miles from his closest rival, Sébastien Destremau.
The Spaniard could have set off again yesterday, but he was expecting better weather conditions. The front which swept across the Bay of Biscay generated north-westerly winds of 30 to 35 knots and waves of 3 to 4 metres. Didac Costa's team was able to observe a flattening out this Thursday compared to yesterday, but the Catalan skipper had to wait for the high tide at 1300 hours to be able to go down the channel.
Over the next few days, the skipper will have to degolfer with a NW'ly wind for around twenty hours, then find a headwind as far as Cape Finisterre. "We could have waited a little longer to find better conditions, but Didac can't wait to leave and we'd rather avoid an overnight departure." explains Jordi Griso, the team manager.
"I had time to sleep yesterday, and I only watched the race last night to see where it was! Now I want to go in, but carefully, but sailing fast like I like to do, I have no other goal than to finish this round the world race." explained Didac Costa.
The skipper has enough supplies to last 105 days on this round the world voyage.
