Final class has a finisher

As Joe Harris and Josh Hall on Gryphon Solo arrive in time for Transat Jacques Vabre party

To the sound of African drum beats permeating the pitch black Brazilian night, the Anglo-American team of Joe Harris and Josh Hall won the Open 50 monohull Class in the Transat Jacques Vabre 2005 when they crossed the finish line at 2005 local time (23:05:45 GMT) after 19 days, 9 hours 5 minutes and 45 seconds racing at sea. They haven't broken the course record set by Alex Bennett and Paul Larsen in 2001, but they have sailed a terrific race...read on for the first reactions from the skippers after stepping onto the pontoon.

Big winners of the ‘little’ Open 50 class, American Joe Harris and Brit Josh Hall, on board their Groupe Finot design Gryphon Solo (ex- Magellan Alpha/ Tommy Hilfiger), complete the plateau of winning teams across the four classes in the 2005 Transat Jacques Vabre 2005, following Crêpes Whaou! (Multi Open 50), Virbac-Paprec (IMOCA Mono Open 60), and Banque Populaire (ORMA Multi Open 60). “It was incredible! We pushed the boat to her full potential, it’s an amazing feeling to have won the Jacques Vabre race!” an elated Joe Harris exclaimed after stepping onto the pontoon.

The Anglo-American pair on Gryphon Solo had the good grace to arrive into Salvador at the start of the Crew Party being held at the CENAB marina waterfront. As the boat was manoeuvred alongside the pontoon, an eight strong Brazilian drum band were beating out the samba and fireworks were let off to herald the arrival of these last winners. All the partygoers whooped and cheered as Josh and Joe let off the champagne corks and hugged each other, grins as wide as Cheshire cats, and clearly overjoyed at coming first after what was a very tough race for all the fleet, them no less.

Joe revealed that they didn’t escape their share of misfortune. “Just a day into the race I had a bad fall, my ribs were badly bruised, I had no idea if they were broken, and I needed to lie down but the boat was crashing up and down on each wave, and I couldn’t get comfortable. I took lots of medication for the pain, but couldn’t even grind a winch for three days. We thought we might have to retire but Josh just said, ‘can you breath?’ and I said yes, so he said 'okay we’ll keep going' - some doctor he is!”

Gryphon Solo took the lead on 7 November at 1800 GMT and held it all the way to the finish. Their greatest rival was their fellow Anglo-American team of Kip Stone and Merf Owen on Artforms, who made a pitstop in Lorient to replace their torn mainsail. “At that stage in the race, we didn’t relax one minute,” Josh takes up the story. “We had no idea if Kip & Merf would set out again or when, and any lead we could get would be crucial. So from then, we decided we had to switch our focus to covering Vedettes de Bréhat, but that resulted in us getting stuck in the same ‘bubble’ of light airs as we didn’t want to separate from them too much. However, Artforms came back from the west and became a real threat again, and at that point we wished we’d been 100 miles further over to the west, although we did then pull out a 100+ mile lead over Vedettes, I reckon we could have been in at least the same time as Roxy. This boat looked after us so well, she gave us hardly any problems, we really opened her up and had some incredible days’ sailing. She sails like an Open 60, but she’s much easier on my old bones, the sails aren’t so big! Hey, Mike (Ed: Golding), you should try sailing an Open 50, much easier on the back!”

Born into a family of offshore sailors, this ex-fisherman and naval boat builder has won his first transatlantic victory, as has the experienced British solo circumnavigator Josh Hall, who has entered the Transat Jacques Vabre three times (abandoned in 1997, 7th in 1999). They managed to end up with a lead of over 200 miles from their nearest adversary, Artforms, who at the 1900 GMT position report was 208m behind, battling for second place with Vedettes de Bréhat (De Broc / S. Escoffier) just 21 miles behind. These two boats are expected to arrive on Friday night, along with the last Open 60 Monohull Galileo (Antunes/Coldefy).