Rounding the tip of Spain to enter the Bay of Biscay and complete her first single-handed transatlantic race aboard an Imoca monohull, Dee Caffari saw her mast collapse at around 0600 UTC this morning. The SE’ly wind was dishing out 45 knots of breeze at the time in big seas resulting from a depression settling between the Azores and the Iberian peninsula. After two hours, the British sailor managed to clear the deck of pieces of the mast which could have punctured the hull and then alerted her shore crew. Aviva had been making 9 knots of boat speed on a direct course towards the finish in Port la Forêt, just 250 miles away. This Wednesday morning, Dee Caffari didn’t have much of an opportunity to make port rapidly as the boat could not be manoeuvred and was drifting at two knots. Difficult to set up an effective jury rig on her own, it has been decided that a tow will be organised to the Spanish port of La Coruña, 160 miles to the SE of her current position. The problem here lies in the fact that there is still a lot of wind in this part of the Bay of Biscay and it isn't set to abate until Thursday morning...

Jean-Baptiste Dejeanty is not exactly having a ball either in this bay which is set to mark the end of this Transat Ecover-BtoB! 70 miles from Port la Forêt this Wednesday at 0500 hours UTC, Maisonneuve is not expected before the start of the afternoon as the solo sailor is making little headway in an E’ly breeze of over thirty knots, which isn‘t set to clock round to the SE until the end of the evening... Handicapped by numerous technical problems for some days, the young skipper has yet to round the Glénan islands to conclude this 4,120 mile crossing. The biting cold and the difficult seas sweeping across the Breton coast aren’t the best way of welcoming a sailor after twenty days at sea! As for Canadian Derek Hatfield (Spirit of Canada), he is just 200 miles from the goal making seven knots of boatspeed upwind in a stiff breeze of over forty knots... His arrival is scheduled for Thursday morning in Port la Forêt. Finally, American Rich Wilson is just a hundred miles astern and Great American III should cross the finish line on Thursday evening.

Translation KJ