February 9, 2019
Jan Guichard: what next?
In Fremantle, a port on the west coast of Australia, arrived the 40-meter maxi-trimaran Spindrift 2, run by French skipper Jan Guichard.
Recall that the crew of Spindrift 2 tried to improve the record of non-stop racing around the world. For 16 days and more than 11,000 nautical miles, Guichard and Co. were ahead of the IDEC-SPORT tri-schedule with skipper Francis Juillon, who have owned Jules Verne Trophy since 2017. Moreover, the wind forecast for further distance was extremely favorable for the team.
However, on the night of February 1 and 2, almost immediately after Spindrift 2 passed south of Kerguelen Island, the crew was forced to stop chasing the record due to a serious breakdown. From the very beginning it was clear that the right hand drive was damaged, and this was not the result of a collision in the dark with some object: no one felt the impact. Later it became known that the rudder of the right rudder collapsed.
What caused this remains to be analyzed. But in any case, the decision to stop the race, according to Guichard, was correct and the only possible. It was no longer possible to use the right-hand drive – his pen (again, according to Guichard) lived its own life.
The crew of Spindrift 2 was photographed as a souvenir. In the coming days, the coastal team will prepare a catamaran for long sea transportation to France. And the famous but unlucky 44-year-old skipper needs to decide whether he intends to try again to get the Jules Verne Trophy in the future.
Although Guichard is already hinting that the next, fifth attempt by the Spindrift 2 crew to set a world record for a world race will probably take place next winter.
301 February 9, 2019 # 8784
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