Michel Desjoyeaux's blog

The passage around the Horn was a bit full-on. The goal was to get to see the Horn, but there was 35-40 knots of breeze with 45 knot squalls and, above all, little visibility. It was night time… Conditions were lively but it was pleasant... It’s rather like a deliverance as it signifies leaving the Southern Ocean and the permanent oppression of the wind! It’s not so much the sea which is difficult

I’ve been leading the Vendée Globe for 18 days now after setting out with a 40 hour deficit. That’s pretty cool.

This is the third time I've been down here in oilskins and it's the first time I have seen ice.  It's not that surprising. In 2001, someone came up to me at the Boat Show a few months after the Vendée Globe and said: "I'd love to do like you and sail quickly around Antarctica seeing the ice!" "You can do one or the other" I answered. "If you do both at the same time, it will have a sad ending." "But you did it," he insisted.  "No.

I’ve made up a small part of the deficit thanks to some nice weather, but I’m going to have to watch it once the others get going again.  They weren’t very lucky hitting a wide Doldrums. Meantime, I’m getting to the zone with some wind, which has enabled me to make up some of my deficit on the group in front. It’s always nice to make up 300 miles on boats which have a 600 mile lead on you and know you’re the fastest of the fleet at nearly every position report. Even if you know why that is and that you can’t do anything about that, it’s satisfying all the same.