Heavily heckled by a southern depression as it headed for Cape Horn, Armel Tripon spent a “New Year’s Eve on the alert”, dancing “on the devil’s skin! “. “I live daily with this fear that wears me out”, tells the skipper in his logbook of the Vendée Globe.
At the helm of his brand new “flying boat” (L’Occitane en Provence), the skipper, who is taking part in his first solo round-the-world trip, is in 13th position on Friday (out of a fleet of 27 skippers still racing) . He still has 8,690 nautical miles (16,095 km) to cover before the finish.
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“Frenzied race”
“Bonne-Espérance, Australia and New Zealand are now far in the wake of the L’Occitane-en-Provence express train! This frantic race in the great south will end in a few days after the legendary passage of Cape Horn, which will give me the legitimate right to piss in the wind! Unless it is for the sailors who pass it from east to west! No matter, I’ll try it out alone in my corner! “.
“There is nothing around us around, we cross the symbolic Nemo point, the most distant GPS point from any land on the globe! It does not affect me more than that, since I have been sailing for more than fifty-two days in a huge desert! The open sea is a good remedy to lose all reference to daily life, clocked up and at fixed times. I live to the rhythm of the sun which has been generous in this Pacific Ocean. An ocean that I particularly liked, very much alive, rhythmic, invigorating with its string of depressions that twisted us in all directions! “.
“And for the 31st, what are you doing, Mr. Tripon?” Well I dance… on the skin of the devil! A southern depression inviting itself to the party makes me spend New Years Eve on the alert, with hollows, bumps and a gusty and icy wind! Without ceasing, for forty-eight hours, the boat passes from wave to wave, rising and falling with a crash, and this phrase from Mandela comes to mind, never as true as during this extraordinary race: I discovered a secret: after climbing a hill, all you find out is that there are many more hills to climb. “
“It hurts for my boat with each blow received, I’m afraid of breakage, since the start of Les Sables d’Olonne, I live with this fear that wears me out on a daily basis. This is also the great south, the rhythm of the waves and the strong wind, associated with the rhythm of the race which manhandles the boat! “
“The fatigue of man and machine will be rewarded after the Horn, even after the Falklands when the heat picks up and the strong winds of the Howling Fifths die off in my transom!” In the meantime, I do the round back on the devil’s skin! Happy New Year. “
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