Foncia claims Bol d'Or

One of the lightest races on record saw the leaders come home at dawn

In one of the slowest Bol d’Or Mirabauds on record, it was French sailing heroes Alain Gautier and Michel Desjoyeaux, on board their D35 Foncia, who clinched line honours at 05:33 local time this morning, in the laborious time of 19 hours 33 minutes and 26 seconds, slightly outside of the course record of 5 hours 1 minutes or even the D35 record of 9 hours…

"It was a seesaw!" summed up Gautier as to the race and the conditions, that saw the places regularly changing mainly according to who was fortunate enough with the wind. On board with Gautier and Desjoyeaux was Jérôme Teillet, Jacques Guichard and Christophe Lassègue.

"A start with 550 boats on the line, is always impressive," Gautier continued. "First you need to get out of Geneva. We had a little trouble initially but at the exit of the Petit Lac, we were in the right area. Then, the wind dropped but thanks to our tactics we chose the good side of the lake. We always stayed in contact from the outset, even though we were only sixth at [the turning mark] Bouveret. At nightfall, inevitably, it became more difficult to read wind on the water and there were many more uncertainties. And then there was this final beauty once we were back into the bay of Geneva at sunrise. We decided to take the right hand side while everyone went on the other side ... and it paid, we moved ahead in the final miles. It was all down to playing small wind shifts and remaining focussed. This is all the more satisfying as we will get a good position in the results of the Challenge Julius Baer. It was a beautiful Bol d'Or! "

Desjoyeaux added: "Last year we were early in our departure and misfiled on our arrival. This year, it was the opposite. That is the difficulty of this race ad what makes it so special: to be first at the right time! There was a lot of twists and turns, changes of leader, shifts right, left ... It has been a long time since I've done a 19 hour long night race! In fact, the starry night was beautiful. It was really nice, the atmosphere on board was excellent. It was fun I guess. This course is superb! "

Foncia was followed over the next 13 minutes by four more D35s – Smart Homes (with former Gitana skipper Fred le Peutrec on the helm), Loick Peyron and Nicolas Grange’s Okalys-Corum, Julius Baer, who had led around the Bouveret turning mark at the opposite end of Lake Geneva (albeit carrying a 60 minute penalty for being OCS at the start) and in fifth place early D35 leader Pascal Bidegorry on Banque Populaire.

Ahead of the seven remaining D35s were the two smaller 28ft M2 catamarans GSMN genolier and Etienne David’s Teamwork. They had overtaken Fresh! The leading M2 at Bouveret which had rounded in fourth place overall.

Three time winner Ernesto Bertarelli finished a disappointing eighth an hour after Foncia, but an hour ahead of the chartered Alinghi 2, helmed by Ed Baird and with Kiwi Cup legends such as Brad Butterworth and Warwick Fleury on board. The brand new Ventilo M1 Gonet & Cie sailing her first race finished in 16th overall, while the BMW Emil Frey Crissier M2 (ho ho) finished two places ahead of Baird.

Sailed in such ridiculously light conditions, there were a huge number of retirements – 284 at the time of writing. Late last night at the Societe Nautique de Geneve, we saw Marc Guillemot’s Open 7.50 Safran pull into the dock with his star crew of Dominique Wavre and Michelle Paret. They had turned back at around 2100. A tired looking Guillemot told us the faintest zephyr would occasionally come in, but it would only last for a minute or so before the calm returned. Enough was enough.

Among the other high profile retirements were Jo Richard on Stephen Fein’s Full Pelt and not surprisingly the Mirabaud LX foiling (or rather not foiling) 18ft skiff, the crew no doubt bored of attempting to keep their wild machine from perpetually falling over in the light conditions. Baron Rothschild’s old Formula 40 Force Cash also pulled out, as did four of the M2 catamarans. Mostly retirements were in the one design Surprise, Grand Surprise and Toucan classes.

At the time of writing – 24 hours in - there have only been 29 finishers and among them not one monohull…

The leading monohulls passed the Bouveret turning mark late yesterday evening with Pascal Batal’s Digital BDO first around at 22:38, 1.5 hours after the multihull leader Julius Baer, and followed closely by the old 36ft Full Pelt, now Eric Gasparini’s Swiss Interim and Jean Psarofaghis’ Pharos 40 Syz & Co.