Sébastien Simon, lying second in the Vendée Globe, has sustained a broken starboard foil on his IMOCA Groupe Dubreuil.
At 17:00 UTC Saturday 7 December, while sailing in the southern Indian Ocean in second place in the Vendée Globe, Sébastien Simon alerted his team that his starboard foil had just broken.
Whilst Simon is bitterly disappointed he immediately pledged to fight on and finish the race.
Simon, who did not hear any significant noise, possibly because he had his earplugs to limit the constant debilitating noise and facilitate sleep, reported to the shore team . . .
“Bad news aboard Groupe Dubreuil. Last night, I lost the starboard foil. I was sleeping when the boat suddenly broached. I went into the cockpit to ease the sheets. I quickly sensed from the feel that something was wrong, the boat was no longer responding in the same way. I quickly understood what it was. I went to check on deck and the foil was broken at the elbow, the most curved part of the foil,”
“On port tack I’m going to lose around 30% of speed, which is significant, but my starboard foil is good and we’ve already done a good proportion of this round the world race on port tack,” noted Simon.
His last few hours of sailing without a starboard foil show that his motivation is intact: he is currently making good progress with good average speeds (16-18 knots) in 20-25 knots of wind and 4 metres of westerly swell.
