Thomas Coville on SodebO - Update

Cape Horn, Cape of storms

Cape Horn represents something special in a sailor’s life, even if, for the sailor in question, it’s not a complete first*, it is the first time single-handed in a multihull.

Thomas Coville is attempting to break the round the world record under sail held by Francis Joyon and this Sunday at 19 hours 42 minutes (GMT) he rounded the legendary rock nicknamed the Cape of Storms.

This nickname is well deserved as this evening there were “very big seas with winds increasing sharply from 12 to 30 knots”. Conditions ultimately proved relatively manageable though after what Thomas has just had to endure. Indeed over the past few days and hours the skipper of Sodeb’O has experienced some particularly testing times.

It all started with two days’ on the alert, slaloming across the ice zones which were potentially very high risk where “we found a little way through between two masses”. You can imagine the tension which reigns aboard: “You go very fast and you have ice all around you with extremely reduced visibility. We’d forecast that the wind was going to fill in and that was what occurred in the form of a very deep depression with 50 knot gusts and hard, cross seas. For 24 to 36 hours it was difficult to sail in the six to eight metre waves.

You hurtle to the bottom of the wave and you’re in a wind shadow, whilst at the top there’s 40 to 50 knots, which sends you off into a surf where you’re no longer in control. The following wave catapults you along or twists you side on. It’s a very unsettling situation, to the extent that the pilot went crazy on two occasions. The boat broached into a wave and I really thought she was going to capsize. We dragged along the side of the wave; the boom swung to the other side and again pulled everything with it on its way through.

After the passage of this depression, I wanted to hoist more sail in the easing wind, to stop the windward float slamming too much and just at that point I got hit by a 50 knot gust. The wave motion whipped the mainsail, which deflated and then inflated again. All that resulted in four broken battens”. It should be noted that changing battens all on your own on a multihull is a titanic operation. The smallest measures five metres and the largest is nine metres. For Thomas this represents seven hours work in conditions where you can suffer frostbite on the ends of your fingers.

Rounding Cape Horn in a multihull and single-handed? The skipper of Sodeb’O admitted a sense of satisfaction: “Even though my deficit is eating away at me, I still retain the sense of determination and satisfaction through being with a boat I feel very good with; a boat which responds perfectly and has only suffered minimal damage despite the very hard conditions. To round the Horn with Sodeb’O is an immense pleasure for me. The Horn is a kind of deliverance. From the Cape of Good Hope to the Horn, if something bad happens, you’re in a very critical situation, especially in a solo, record programme where all you have around you is solitude. In a multihull you’re very exposed.

After the Horn you have a coastline and shipping. The pressure is different and enables you to switch to another mindset. When we see the state of the fleet in the Vendée Globe, we can be proud of the boat we’ve built. I can better understand why Groupama 3 was destroyed last winter. We’re in a difficult spell of weather with a violent and very fast succession of systems. When you’re in a single system, you don’t get such a sea state. In contrast when you experience such a succession of depressions, the sea becomes very chaotic and very hard”. Just a few miles from reaching the end of the inappropriately named Pacific, the skipper of Sodeb’O admits that “We’re really not cut out to live in these places.”

IDEC took 35 days, 12 hours and 36 minutes to round this third great cape but even though Sodeb’O has taken around 40 days to make the Horn, the deficit on the record holder has now shrunk to 1,314 miles.

* Thomas has already rounded Cape Horn five times: In 1997, during the Jules Verne Trophy aboard Sport-Elec with Olivier de Kersauson, in 1998 from East to West with Yves Parlier in the Route de l’Or (New York-San Francisco) aboard Aquitaine Innovations, in 2000 single-handed in the Vendée Globe aboard Sodeb’O, in 2002 in crewed configuration in the Volvo Ocean Race aboard Djuice and in 2005, in crewed configuration once again aboard the maxi-catamaran Doha 2006 in the Oryx Quest.

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