If everything had gone according to plan and his dreams had come true, Jack Bouttell would have been on the startline of this Vendée Globe in an old IMOCA and ready to try his hand at his first solo circumnavigation.

But his hopes of sponsorship fell through and the project never got properly off the ground. Twenty-nine year-old Bouttell, a key member of the Volvo Ocean Race-winning Dongfeng Race Team, was forced to sell the boat and has had to sit the race out.

Failing to make that project a reality, was a bitter pill to swallow and for a few months after the boat went to a new owner in January, Bouttell decided to take a complete break from the Vendée Globe.

It is true to say that even though the Australian-born, four-time Solitaire du Figaro competitor hasn’t yet sailed a single nautical mile in the race, he already knows how the Vendée Globe bug can bite.

Watching the start of this race, there was a bit of a sort of ‘what could have been’ feeling in my mind,he said,but my son had been born a few days before and that helped with the transition a bit. But this race obviously wasn’t for me for one reason or another.

The good news, however, is that, after a period of reassessment and reflection, Bouttell – who was also a crew member on the maxi-tri Spindrift 2 on the abortive 2018/2019 Jules Verne attempt – is once again on the hunt for a boat and sponsors to back him for the 2024 edition.

I feel a lot more positive about the next one,” he told the IMOCA Class from his home in France. “I’m in a better place mentally, a bit older and a bit wiser and I am just trying to make it happen.

So what has Bouttell made of the race to date? Like any high performance sailor, he has been studying the impact of the latest foil designs and how the sailors have coped with the extra power at their fingertips.

 

© ©Eloi Stichelbaut/Dongfeng Race Team

Bouttell believes that the boats with fully retractable foils have the best combination of modes to maximize speed and efficiency in heavy weather and in lighter, more foiling-friendly conditions.

I think foils are a good concept, but it’s maybe a case of thinking about what type of foil design you use,” he said. “I was disappointed that Alex (Thomson) and Seb Simon pulled out because, for me, they had quite an interesting foil solution because they could effectively retract their foils, which I thought was a nice compromise….

I think a few of the guys (with foils that cannot be fully retracted) have said they are finding it really hard to manage their boat’s acceleration,” he added. “They have pulled their foils in to try to slow the boat down and to try to make it more manageable, but they are ending up with the boat either flat and slow or heeling with the foils still in the water.”

Bouttell believes that compared to the 2016/17 race we still haven’t seen long periods with the right conditions for foilers to really excel. “They’ve had quite a bit of upwind, lots of depressions to manage when you are not sailing the boat 100% anyway, and the trade winds weren’t very well established and were quite far south. And once you get to the Southern Ocean, you are out of foiling mode a little bit,” he said.

We asked Bouttell who has impressed him over the last five weeks. He picked the three leading skippers in non-foiling boats, Jean Le Cam on Yes We Cam! in third place, Damien Seguin in Groupe APICIL in fifth position and Benjamin Dutreux on OMIA-Water Family in seventh spot.

Those guys are sailing really well,” he said. “Strategically they had the best plan for the first week – Jean’s sailing very well anyway – but by tacking into Cape Finisterre, that was a really good option. The way they’re sailing their boats, being able to push and, actually a lot of the time, not being any slower than the foilers, is very impressive.”

His next pick was Charlie Dalin who Bouttell believes deserves to be leading on board APIVIA. “He has sailed the best,he said.You look at his strategy and how he has managed his boat; it’s all about not breaking it and sailing fast when he needs to. Just before they passed the Cape of Good Hope, he was really close to Thomas (Ruyant on LinkedOut) and then he took off. You could just see that he worked his way really well through the light transition and then got into the breeze first. For me, he deserves to be where he is…

And finally his thoughts on Jérémie Beyou’s brave race on Charal. Beyou has now caught up with the backmarkers, accomplishing the Frenchman’s first goal after re-starting eight days late. Bouttell says Beyou made the right decision to re-start – not just for him personally but for his team and his sponsors.

I think it will be easier for him to turn the page on this race, having tried at least to carry on,” he said. “If he just threw in the towel straight away, I think the mental recovery would have been brutal and he would have dug himself into a pretty deep hole.

Bouttell knows how hard you have to push in a state-of-the-art IMOCA to maximize its performance and he can only guess how difficult that is to achieve when your overall motivation to win has been taken away. “I think that’s what Jérémie’s massively struggling with at the moment because realistically he is not going to be able to get back into the lead group,” he said.

Bouttell has also been sympathising with the plight of Thomas Coville and his team on Sodebo whose Jules Verne record attempt is now over in the Southern Indian Ocean, in almost an identical action replay of what happened to Spindrift. 

They have had the exact same failure in the exact same place as we had with Spindrift in February last year, which is pretty incredible – and disappointing for them,” he said. “At that stage you’re in the South and we had a similar situation – we were 2-300 miles ahead of the record – but obviously as soon as you stop to look at repairing things, you lose your lead pretty quickly.

While Bouttell believes Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier and their team on Maxi Edmond de Rothschild will probably get another chance at the record this winter, time is not on Coville’s side. “Never say never, but I can’t see them actually being ready do go again for another trip,” he said.

 

Ed Gorman