“The” Boss Makes Impossible Doldrum Escape and Steps on the Gas

Image Hugo Boss Vendee 2016 leading the way after radical strategy for lead

We all know that depressing feeling that comes when stuck in a dead wind zone...well Hugo Boss Alex Thomson sailing solo Round the World has just figured out how to avoid the inevitable. The Boss took up real speed down the line when everything said it should completely be on the stop-drift.

Hugo Boss is now leading the most famous Solo Round the World Regatta in History and breaking records in Equatorial passages. But the Vendee Globe has just begun...more than 3 fourth of the race is yet to come, teams will have to go down the Gates of South Africa into the Indian Ocean down to the cold Southern Pacific borderlining the Arctic Sea passing the most dangerous Cape in the World -Cape Horn and then escalate the Atlantic to the North to sling-shot the trade winds back to Europe. They will do this alone in a boat that is almost airborne and picks up massive speeds. They will do all this unassisted. Day and night. Yeah, its a long, long, long dangerous and awesome race. The real challenges still are to be revealed but for now The Boss is on top of the show, right on the money.

On November 16 Daily Express reported that Alex Thomson made history extending the lead in the Vendee Globe Trophy.

Hugo Boss had fallen into a ninth position in early hours of the race. His lead came in cash-return-investment for a radical bold move to escape the Doldrums dead winds. He was the only sailor to pull off the trick. The rest of the fleet was stuck into it.   

“I think we’re all losers here if we look at Alex Thomson. If we look at the fleet, I am not doing too badly. Alex didn’t get held up at all. He was hardly ever below ten knots. When he is in the trade winds and at the helm, he will be able to double his lead. He is the big winner in the Doldrums,” Yann Eliès skipper of Team Quéginer Espoir Leucémie recognized.

In and out fast from the Doldrums Thomson picked up speed and doubled the distance separating himself from the fleet still stuck in the no-wind hell.

The truth is that Hugo Boss is hungry for a Round the World passage since it dismasted in the last edition of the Barcelona World Race in January 2015. Hugo Boss had then led the fleet in the early stages of the Barcelona only to have to fully abandon the race due to the damages caused to the mast.

Since then Hugo Boss has been working hard. He topped to 3rd position  in the New York Vendee. In training and preparation for the Vendee Globe Thompson´s Boss went to work and took care of business.

For those following the IMOCA Ocean Masters World Circuit the sight of the All-Black IMOCA flying the races is more than familiar. The Hugo Boss acts as reassurance for fans who look for things they recognize and that is what Hugo Boss has become in the past years a Team and boat which almost everyone knows -an Icon. Yet total victory and glory of the sport of sailing still eludes the mastered Thomson in the past years. Today it seems that things are on a flip change, Thompson is not only leading the pack in the most prestigious Solo Round the World Race of the World but is making a record passage and is set to break more records if he continues to sail as hard as he is sailing.

Avoiding the Doldrums -area in which sailors have been trapped due to no wind conditions for weeks and even more is not a thing “easier said than done” it is a thing that almost considered impossible to do yet Thomson pulled it off. The mastered IMOCA Sailor took a risky decision to cross the Doldrums through an area all other teams avoided. While the fleet got stuck Thomson moved with new foils under his helm slowly but constantly and soon found the way out to stronger winds.

Vendee Globe reported on November 16 that Alex Thomson continued "to blaze the trail southwards”.

"Forecasters are presently predicting the race record to the Cape of Good Hope may fall thanks to the very south easterly position of the South Atlantic High Pressure system,"  Vendee Globe explained.  

The Vendee Globe is historically dominated by French Sailors, however Hugo Boss became the first non-Frenchman to lead the fleet past the equator. The skipper from UK took down the record mark set by Jean Le Cam in 2004 of 10 days.

Thomson has set a new reference time from the start line to the Equator at 9 days 07 hours 02 minutes -over one day from the previous record.

Second in position Le Cléac’h crossed over the Equator  2 hours and 54 minutes later. The fleet was still stuck back.

“The boat seems good and it seems like we will soon be into some stronger winds, it will free us up and we will start to go pretty fast I think. The routing I am seeing down to the Cape of Good Hope is quite quick. We are getting pretty close to the Cape in 10 days time. So that is very positive,” Thomson said hours before finding the closing Doldrum door.

The Vendee Globe -despite its historical trajectory is not isolated from modern trends of sailing. New sailing technology and innovation are a big part of the event. Since the IMOCAs were first fitted with the new daggerfoils, L-foils and hydrofoils the debate has been open on the direction and evolution of the legendary fleet and boats.

Foils have already been testing in live action in the New York Vendee as well as in other recent events, training and security testings. Foil leaders have emerged revealing that foiled boats are actually faster and simply better. While some old generation fleet boats have still not equipped their IMOCAs with foils -mostly due to budget limitations, hydrofoils are catching on fast. But the debate is not one sided. Foils have a weak spot. In high -and extremely high winds conditions foils can cause damage to the structure and mast, and of course because the foils drag into the water boats which have not meticulously corrected their rudder mechanisms experience rudder shaking and even misdirections.

But Boss assures that he is in the zone and on fire with the new foils on his boat. Speaking about the daggered hydrofoils Thomson said; “I feel pretty confident when this boat is going fast. I don’t feel any reason not to be. We had a little snippet of what this boat can do in the New York-Vendee and then since then I have said before we have made leaps and bounds performance wise. But even so I think we are still very underdeveloped compared with a lot of these boats. Considering we were upside down a year ago, followed by six months in the shed, we have not had the time these other guys have had.”

“The Doldrums are expanding and becoming increasingly messy, somewhat closing the doors on the chasing pack. Jean-Pierre Dick -one of the pre-race favourites, was becalmed for some hours in the Doldrums on his St. Michel-Virbac, along with Thomas Ruyant of Project Imagine and Jean Le Cam of Finistere Mer Vent. However, they are not the worst affected at 250-290 miles behind the leaders. Kito de Pavant of Bastide Otio is more than 100 miles behind them and then 100 miles behind him are Louis Burton for Bureau Vallée and Bertrand de Broc of the iconic MACSF,” Vendee Globe organizers reported.

Demasting is perhaps one of the last things one wants to experience in a race like this. Preparation and training for the Vendee Globe takes months if not years, it is not only Ocean Mastering and training but economics and sponsors too, they play a big part of the game. That said, having what it takes to sail Solo Round the World unassisted is a mind set which requires a lifetime to develop to perfection.

For these and other reasons abandoning a Vendee Globe for demasting or other reasons is for Sailors a hard and deep profound experience. This year it was the unlucky French Sailor Tanguy de Lamotte who had to live the demasting karma.

After reaching Cabo Verde Islands and conducting a full evaluation of the damages de Lamotte thought about possible quick fixes to continue the race but it turned out that he had to pay the bill in total. The damages caused to De Lamotte´s mast was too serious for him to be able to improvise a solution yet still he refused to be assisted.

Recognizing that going Round the World was now impossible the French Sailor de Lamotte decided to nevertheless take his boat back home, sailing it himself, in the conditions it was.  

“I’m not retiring. The damage is too important to imagine continuing to Sail Around the World, but it is not serious enough to stop me from bringing my boat home. I’m taking her back to Les Sables d’Olonne, without having been all the way, but I shall be continuing my fight for the Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque charity. That’s the way it goes. You have to accept these things. I think I have been very lucky. The mast could have broken and injured me,” more than inspiring words from the French legend.

It is not De Lamotte´s first Vendee. He finished 10th in the last edition and now he will have to keep his eye on the coming edition.

6 days into the race he told his shore team that the top of his mast had come away and was hanging near the deck by the halyards.

High performance sail boats have evolved masts long years ago into multi-fractionated masts. For those who are unfamiliar with a fractionated masts it is a mast which is composed of several párts instead of one solid piece. Masts are fractionated because in this way they can be trimmed. The masts and the halyards system in regatta speed sail boats is trimmed to increase sail resistance and sail surface and make the most of wind conditions, resistance and other issues. Fractionated masts today are usually made of carbon and a mast can suffer damage in the higher or lower fractions of it damaging one component and not the entire mast. This is why De Lamotte is able to sail back home.

French Sailor de Lamotte was sailing his IMOCA Initiatives Coeur in 20 knot breezes when the damage to the mast hit. To assess the damage De Lamotte had to climb the mast head. There he realized that the structural integrity of the mast tip was considerably compromised.

Boat damages so far in the Vendee Globe edition is low compared to the 2012-2013 Edition in which seven Skippers had to abandon early in the race due to all type of misfortunes and damages caused mostly by bad weather. Keel damages, demasting, keel ram failure, electrical failures, structural damages due to collision with buoys, are some of the issues which previous Vendee Globe runners faced.  

Now way out of the the Doldrums the leaders are moving and pushing hard.

Positions posted live on the tracker by November 17 revealed a Hugo Boss still in the lead followed by Seabstien Josse of the Edmond de Rothschild moving up one position against third Armel Le Cleac´h The Jackal running the Banque Populaire. Forth in position Vincent Riou -the Icon of PRB followed in Fifth by Paul Meilhat in his beautiful SMA. Nothing is yet defined more than 3-4 th of the World Oceans still await and it will put up hell of fight.

The fleet´s strategy to find the fastest way to Cape of Good Hope in South Africa is to drop into the South West of the Atlantic about 300 miles East of Salvador de Bahia Brazil, Why? Because that is where the slingshot-trade-winds-freight-train-tracks become open for the grap. Vende is calling the move the “Brazilian Job”.

Vendee Globe confirmed that the new generation of foiling IMOCA monohulls are all in the front of the fleet including that of Hugo Boss. Thomson continues to add separation miles from its competitors.

The boat is designed to reach 22 knots in just 16 to 17 knots conditions a pretty impressive statement of design but when winds and waves increase the Skippers will have to drop sail area to avoid wrecking completely the structure and losing control.

"It is pretty amazing to be on a boat which in 16-17 knots of breeze I can average 22 knots," Thomson said as he moved through the very same waters where he and Pepe Ribes lost their mast during the Barcelona World Race in January 2015 on the previous Hugo Boss.  

"It is good for me this. The breeze has finally come left a bit to allow Hugo Boss to lift up her skirts a little bit and go a bit faster. I am enjoying it. I have a bit more breeze for a few hours and then it will lighten up and drop a little bit before tomorrow when we will start a real fast, fast dash for three or four days towards the Cape of Good Hope,” Thomson seems to be loving every minute of it.

“The Jackal” Armel Le Cleac´s is 83 miles behind the leader. And is fast to connect the dots off Cabo Frio, north of Rio to the transportation-express to Cape of Good Hope.

"Alex Thomson is fast! He’s on the attack. But there’s still a long way to go. I’m sailing my own route. I’m not really watching his average speed. I’m focusing on my boat’s potential. A lot is going to happen. He had a nice crossing through the Doldrums. I’m going to have to keep up the pace not to get left behind," The Jackal Le Cleach warned form his solid second place.

“Will Thomson be able to pull off The Brazilian Job?” Vendee Globe asked and already warned that the passage to Cape of Good Horn will also probable have this year a new record.  

New generation foils are still to pass the fire test of high speed in long Round the World regattas so what exactly will happen now in the coming extreme winds and waved waters is yet to be revealed.

"I guess we are going to find out how strong these boats are now." Alex Thomson said well aware of the limits of the boats yet pushing hard on the gas pedal.

“To be honest if it was flat water in those wind conditions my boat could average over 30 knots. With waves I don’t expect to be going much faster than I am now, to be honest 22-24 knots maybe. I have a little composite job to do, just to make sure everything really is ready...make sure I am fresh to be able to hit the turbo button when it arrives," The Boss kicked it.