Sunday 14th December 2008
Damned Indian!
“There’s been an icy rain for hours and neither my shouts nor my tears
change a thing. All of a sudden it stops. The boat stalls. The speedos which
have been in the red start spinning as the S’ly wind kicks in. That’s what
we were waiting for! This wind is coming straight off the ice floe and it
nips at my wet fingers. I run forward and switch the immense sail to the
right side of the stays and then go back to the manœuvres and sheet her in
like my life depended on it. All of a sudden the boat kicks into life again.
You feel her sit up and get going again. You recognise this behaviour and
the apparent wind created by the speed whistles past your cheek. We’re off!
You have to believe in it again. The wind has indeed kicked in and I treat
myself to a flight lasting several minutes, the central pod completely clear
of the water supported by the end of the daggerboard. High, very high, as if
I was sailing off Quiberon, except that I’m at 49° South and 96° East. A
single magical moment to wipe the slate clean and retrace my wake.”
Thomas Coville doesn’t disguise his desire to escape this damned Indian
Ocean, which has been rather unkind to him the whole way. And he’s not the
only one to curse it. In the vicinity of the Kerguelen Islands and it’s a
“lumpy, bumpy world”, some of the skippers in the Vendée Globe have just
paid the price for the brutality of the waves. For Olivier de Kersauson,
“the Indian has always tortured sailors”, “The sea is cold and hard”, “A
madhouse of mischief”, “The Indian is an irascible ocean which requires
audacity and virtue from sailors”. And it’s not the skipper of Sodeb’O,
former crew to Kersauson in a victorious Jules Verne Trophy attempt, who
will say the contrary.
Still a few miles from Tasmania tonight, Thomas won’t have any regrets about
leaving the Indian behind him, an Indian which has left him smarting. He has
lost time and time is all that counts in a record attempt. It is this alone
that the sailor is chasing. At midnight last night the Maxi Trimaran crossed
the longitude of Cape Leeuwin after 25 days and 9 hours at sea with a
deficit of 2 days 18 hours in relation to Francis Joyon’s time. It’s not
drastic but it is annoying, especially as the skipper of Sodeb’O has worked
hard and had made up part of his deficit midway through the week. Even
though he knows he’s quick, very quick even, even though he has complete
trust in his 32 metre trimaran, he knows he is powerless against time. “I
feel a competitive rage once again, mixed with the vanity of knowing that
time is trickling away and that you have no control of it whatsoever. It is
a very masculine pretension to believe that you can plan, anticipate and
understand everything and put it all in boxes”. From the entry into the
Indian, a spiteful zone of high pressure brought him to order, barring the
way to him. After that it was a fabulous, long run, some beautiful days
slipping along before being brought to a complete standstill before Cape
Leeuwin by a killer transition phase which reared up between two lows:
“Zones where nothing can be decided and where you are subject to anything;
nightmarish zones which set sailors nerves on edge”. Thomas will have lost a
day and a half between the Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of
Australia. This evening he is less than 800 miles from Tasmania, which will
bring an end to the Indian and open the door to the Pacific, which he is set
to reach in around two days time.
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Translated by Kate Jennings – Expression
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