Down in Les Sables

Scrutineering underway for Vendee Globe fleet

It may be Sunday, but on the Vendée Globe pontoons, between the sunny periods and squally showers, the public are out in force with their usual fervour to admire the 20 monohulls (out of 21) that are already here, with the 20th, Karen Leibovici's Bénéfic arriving this morning at 7am.

The scrutineers and class measurers are now well underway, with their checks to ensure that the safety rules and the Open 60 IMOCA class rules are respected by all the competitors. Three pairs, with one representative from the race management and one from the UNCL have divided up the work and are busy examining every little nook and cranny of the monohulls.

Today, Sunday, the first six boats were the focus of attention: Australian Nick Moloney’s Skandia, Marc Thiercelin’s Pro-Form, Karen Leibovici’s Bénéfic, Patrice Carpentier’s VM Matériaux, Norbert Sedlacek’s Austria One and Sébastien Josse’s VMI.
Patrick Celton, who is used to these procedures explained the ins and outs of these examinations: "We simply check that all the safety elements correspond exactly to the rules laid down by the racers and the race organisers. We have to ensure that if there is a problem, everything is done to enable a singlehanded sailor to save himself and come to the assistance of any other boat.

"Passive safety measures involve the construction standards and the boat’s measurements: can the boat be clearly identified from the air, for example. Active security is linked more to the equipment the skipper takes on board. This goes much further with the Vendée Globe than for other races, as the sailors will be finding themselves in dangerous, distant zones, where it is difficult to come to their rescue."

Celton stresses the importance of this procedure, as although it has never happened on the Vendée Globe, a skipper and a boat can be banned from taking part in the race, if all the safety rules are not met.

At 3pm today the French Minister of Defence, Michèle Alliot-Marie, officially named Hervé Laurent’s boat UUDS. The champagne bottle smashed to pieces against the boat which won the Vendee Globe in 1997 with Christophe Auguin at the helm. Aside from the minister was the French TV star, Laurent Boyer.

Some figures about the Vendée Globe village

5: the number of weeks it took to get the village ready
7.5 : the width of the pontoons in metres
50: the number of people, who worked on the village
104: the number of displays
240: the length in metres of the pontoons
250: the number of articulated lorries it took to transport everything to build the village
5,000 : the surface area of the village in sqm
7,000 : the number of visitors expected on the pontoon on Saturday, the opening day of the village