Our Mate Alex Thomson’s Races

[Graeme]

Alex is still in the lead.

Jérémie Beyou is slightly behind him, by 2.8 miles. This is impressive because his boat, Maître Coq, is of the previous generation. I think that she's been upgraded with foils.

Sébastien Josse, on Edmond de Rothschild, is also in the chase, and trails Alex by 10.8 miles. He's following Beyou, though. The boat, which is occasionally referred to as Gitana (the team's name), is one of the latest generation.

Alex lost a lot of miles yesterday because his autopilot disengaged at 28 knots, and forced the boat into an emergency crash tack! There's a video on his Facebook page with all the details, but the short version is that a GPS failed, and caused the system to go down. Thankfully nothing was damaged, except his lead.

[Giles]

You can follow Alex's progress here.  He's now lost the lead….

http://www.ny-vendee.com/en/race-tracker/

[Giles]

Third….

Come on boy....

[Graeme]

+1.

He should stop wasting time eyeing up the Winter 2016 Iron Heart releases, and get back to beating those Frenchies.

[Graeme]

The weather isn't great in the middle of the Atlantic right now…

[Graeme]

Alex is in the lead again, just! But with a 2.5 mile margin, I suspect that he'll lose it again.

[Giles]

Alex is doing 1.5knots at the moment, the other 2 out the front are doing 10knots.  And Alex is now in 3rd.  Looks like he has an issue…..

[Aetas]

37° and 1.3 knots sounds not promising. Hopefully only a wind problem.

[Giles]

He's actually on a completely different (and what looks like better - to me anyway) course, maybe he knows something we don't….

[Graeme]

It's really to do with the wind. When looked at the weather on the tracker earlier, it was very week.

Alex said in one of the podcasts that he got separated from the other leaders when he wiped out with the GPS failure. So now he's sailing in a different bit of the sea.

Fingers crossed that he finds some breeze.

[Aetas]

Sails can take in more wind, thus helping him to sail faster.

[Graeme]

Alex came in third, unfortunately the gods of wind weren't with him at the end.

Looks like the new Hugo Boss is very quick, he didn't break anything, and he led the race for a fair chunk of time. Good result all round.

Now onto beating the Frenchies in the Vendée.

[Giles]

Alex, if this is not a sponsor obligation I'd be very worried….

https://www.facebook.com/AlexThomsonRacing/videos/1439553842725330/

[Graeme]

An article about the new Hugo Boss. Doesn't sound like a pleasant place to spend 80 days.

http://www.yachtingworld.com/extraordinary-boats/92713-92713

[Graeme]

The Vendée Globe kicks off this weekend.

Yachting World have posted an article about Alex's boat, along with a video interview of Stewart Hosford, MD of Alex Thomson Racing.

There's also a tour of Edmond de Rothschild by Sébastien Josse. She's sort of a sistership to Hugo Boss, though Alex's boat is more radical.

[Graeme]

Sailing Anarchy walks the docks.

[Graeme]

Vendée Globe start now live.

Alex has "massive support in Gosport" according to the commentator. (Dee Caffari?)

[Giles]

Er, well he would, he lives here…...

[Graeme]

I know, I'm just amused by Gosvegas featuring in the commentary of a major sporting event.

Dee also said that she wasn't initially too confident for Alex's chances, but all the French are scared of him, so she thinks that he might be in the running.

[Giles]

I am sure that if Alex's boat holds up, he will cream this race. I know the boat is seriously fast, he started building it so late, that it is like a 0.5 rev further ahead than the French.  But is is fragile, he's broken in badly once already and is not 100% sure why it broke, so he has just added a shit load of strengthening up the front…...If he keeps this together, I predict a 7 day  or better circumnavigation.....