35 minutes separation

Tight finish between Virbac and Sill at conclusion of Transat Jacques Vabre

Jean-Pierre Dick and Loick Peyron on Virbac-Paprec crossed the finish line last night at 23:19:02 GMT as winners of the IMOCA Open 60 class of the Transat Jacques Vabre after a race record crossing from Le Havre of 13 days, 9 hours, 19 minutes and 2 seconds at an average speed of 13.51 knots of 14.32 through the water.
There was tension for those at the finish line off the Bay of All Saints as right up until the last minute it seemed possible that Roland Jourdain and Ellen might steal the show - the last position report at 1900 GMT showed Sill et Veolia to be just 8.7m behind nearer to the shore. Both boats were having to gybe to the finish

In the end it was the bigger Farr boat which prevailed, the second consecutive victory in the Transat Jacques Vabre for Jean-Pierre Dick's Open 60. In the process Virbac-Paprec's time is three days and four hours faster than the monohull race record set by Roland Jourdain and Gael Le Cleac’h on Sill Plain Fruit in 2001 of 16 days, 13 hours and 23 minutes.

Incredibly after 4,600 miles of racing Roland Jourdain and Ellen MacArthur on board Sill et Veolia finished just 35 minutes and 1 second later - the tightest ever finish between two leaders in this race. They appeared out of the Brazilian night on starboard tack, moving smoothly along at 13 knots in the moderate breeze. Throughout the Transat Jacques Vabre Virbac and Sill have rarely been more than 30 miles apart.

"We really struggled after the Equator because we were behind and the way it works is like it's a little bit like an escalator and whoever gets off the front keeps on taking more and more miles," said Ellen upon her arrival. "Basically, Virbac got away and he pulled away more and more and more in better breeze all the time so we got stuck behind.

"We tried to close the gap 24 hours ago and we basically said we've got to try everything to get back those miles, so last night after the last position report we headed quite a long way inshore and that worked brilliantly and we managed to get back down to 15 or 13 miles this morning. But that still wasn't enough so we tried something else this afternoon and, again, that worked really, really well but not well enough and we got down to 8 miles but it wasn't good enough.

"I think we're pretty glad to be in but pretty frustrated to be second… We sailed a very hard race, I think we sailed a good race, we were pretty unlucky in the Doldrums and things just didn't really go our way. But we tried everything we could to pull back what we could but sadly it wasn't enough.

"I think the speed has been absolutely incredible. I've sailed 60-footers a lot but this was really something different. Sailing two-handed normally helps a little bit and you're not too tired but certainly within the first week we were absolutely exhausted. I mean so tired that Bilou (aka Roland Jourdain) fell asleep drinking a cup of tea in front of me and just dropped the tea! It really was extraordinarily hard and it seemed that every time we tried to sleep it was another sail change but we just kept pushing and that's what kept us up with the leaders.

"It was fantastic racing with Bilou [Roland Jourdain] and to get back to the 60s…brilliant boats, they really are. They go through anything and it was great to be sailing on one again. But sailing with Bilou is very special - I very much took on this race because Bilou asked me to do this and we both got an enormous amount of pleasure doing this race together. We laughed so much and I think I've laughed more with Bilou in this race than over the past year! Sure we didn't win and a little bit upset because of that but I've certainly got no regrets going out there and doing what we did. It was an amazing race."