Vendée Globe. Great departure for the ninth edition of Around the World

After a mandatory passage in the “mixed zone” starting at 7.45 am, the 33 competitors left the pontoon one by one and every four minutes, before descending the canal behind closed doors, to then go off like rockets during a Sunday regatta.

Follow the Vendée Globe live thanks to the cartography here

In one of the winds around the southeast of 15 knots and under bright sunshine, the 33 competitors in this 9th Vendée Globe were full ball bearing at 2:20 pm after a delay due to fog, heading to the Winding buoy located seven miles, and left on the port side. If this Sunday afternoon is going to be a good part of slide favorable to the foilers, the rest will get much tougher according to Christian Dumard, “meteorologist” of the Vendée Globe:

“A first front will appear in the second part of the next night (from Sunday to Monday) in the Bay of Biscay, under the effect of a depression located in the west of Ireland. The wind will move from southeast to south, then southwest, and then turn northwest early in the morning. There will be a ridge to cross on Monday 9th with a high pressure bubble at Cape Finisterre, before the arrival of a new front on Tuesday 10th November.

Then the wind will blow from the southwest between 25 and 28 knots with gusts of 40, lifting a fairly heavy sea and waves of 4 meters and more. Rather, the strategy will be to go west to find the wind change and descend downwind behind the front and with westerly winds. “