At the start of this 3rd express stage, known as the 24 Hours of Cornwall, everyone was looking after their speed and placing themselves in ideal conditions while waiting for the wind to drop next night. There were few surprises at the head of the fleet, with the best of them doing well and confirming the provisional general classification.
There are those who want to drive the nail in, those who intend to do it all over again, some ready to tempt the devil... In the middle of the Solitaire URGO Le Figaro this afternoon, we felt a big appetite to fight, readable in this superb English departure*. Finally, the coastal course initially planned, which would have been risky in a sustained medium, was finally over. The race management preferred to launch the fleet of 43 Solitaires full throttle, with the wind on the beam out to sea.
Strong Hardy, Lunven on the lookout, the big boys on the line
At this game, it was Adrien Hardy who got the first out of the pack, taking advantage of Charlie Dalin's return to the line, thinking he had been recalled... wrongly. On this 150 mile express format, the skipper of Macif 2015 could ruminate on this excessive caution until late in the evening... The upwind descent towards the Glénans was certainly just an hors d'oeuvre, but this tack enabled the positions to be clarified and put a fleet in single file, which is still very tightly bunched together. At the front, Gildas Mahé, Nicolas Lunven, as well as Alexis Loison, Xavier Macaire and the Czech sailor Milan Kolacek, the first rookie in the Radio France rankings, were all showing great ambitions, far ahead of Julien Pulvé and Tanguy Le Turquais, who was less lively than usual.
One step to the side
After this warm-up lap towards the Glénans, we'll be sailing downwind with the spinnakers towards the Sud Guérande buoy, some 65 miles away. As the wind picked up to 18 knots with the chop deepening, the first gybing duels could begin. Shifted to the south, it was the couple Alexis Loison and Erwan Tabarly who took the lead, with the bulk of the troops skimming the rocks to the south of the archipelago to get closer to the coast.
Strange trajectory? It is however the one that routers promise to pay to cross belle-île at the end of the evening. It should be remembered that the regulations allow the skippers to pass to port or starboard of this obstacle on the route to the Sud Guérande buoy, the next course mark. Though the promised rotation of the wind to the right could lead us to believe that the passage via the South will pay off in the end, the majority of the skippers seem to be positioning themselves to stay as close to land as possible. Where the thermal is strongest, where it lasts the longest.
As is often the case at the start of a stage, the big guns were soon back in the lead, with Yann Eliès and Jérémie Beyou in the top ten. As for Sébastien Simon, fourth in the general standings, he confirmed in seventh position that he was to be reckoned with. On the amateur side, we regretted the withdrawal of Marc Pouydebat, who was forced to start his engine following a huge coconut tree which prevented him from keeping control of his trajectory close to the rocks.
Launched with full downwind at nearly 10 knots in ideal conditions, the skippers are ahead of schedule this evening, but stuck at the helm of their Figaro boats. And as the wind will then ease off to become almost zero in the early hours of the morning, the 24 hours of Cornwall could well be white.
* start line positioned in the wind axis, which allows the skippers to start crosswind, at full speed.
