“A nag race!”

Having sailed 5,771 miles at an average speed of 14.12 knots, Vincent Riou and Jean Le Cam have secured a win in the Transat Jacques Vabre’s IMOCA category in a time of 17 d 00 h 41 min 47 s.

Jean Le Cam: “It really was a nag race! What I mean by that is we were pushing the boats incredibly hard. These IMOCA 60s have the ability to go very fast, you can push them to their maximum provided you really put them under pressure. We never had any relaxing conditions or calm downwind sprints... it was flat-out reaching the whole time! Indeed we saw that the rudders couldn’t cope… and when the rudders can’t take it, that really is a sign that we’ve been pushing the beast to the limit. It’s interesting to see that the two leading boats both had to make technical pit-stops…”

Vincent Riou: "We had an issue with the keel ram, which is something that has never happened to me before… a bush which holds the ram bearing partially failed and that altered the angle of the ram. The materials the ram is made of are high spec, which means there is some factor of safety built-in so it was ok in the end. However, it had been like that for more than ten days. When you cant the keel, it gets jammed each time and you have to push it by hand to complete the canting movement ".

CF