Neutrogena liegt zur Zeit auf Platz 7 und ist gut dabei.
„Président“ des Franzosen Jean Le Cam läuft nach Mastbruch die Kapverden an.
Die zweitplatzierte „Foncia“ mit Michel Desjoyeaux plant einen Reparaturstopp in Brasilien.

Jean Le Cam (FRA) President:
„It happened at about 1900 hrs, so it wasn’t yet dark. There were 20-25 knots of wind and we slammed into a wave. We were under gennaker, but it was nothing exceptional. How and why it happened, I’ve no idea. It wasn’t really as if we were digging into a wave. We just slammed into it. It had already happened twenty times before.
As we hit the wave, we heard a cracking sound. It was all over in two seconds. You start to look up and it’s already over. I’ve no idea what really happened.
I was at the helm and Bruno at the nav station on stand-by.
The mast fell forwards. It just snapped. I can’t really say any more than that. It must have broken in several pieces.
After that there’s always the same worry. You want to avoid damaging the hull. We had to get it all out of the way as quickly as possible. We cut the halyards and everything else away and got rid of it to make sure the boat was clear. Then we started up the engine immediately.“

Michel Desjoyeaux (FRA), Foncia:
„The bow of Foncia is damaged. The lower part of the bow there is a foam section better known as the crash box. It is laminated to the hull covered with several layers of carbon.
Sunday while on the bow we noticed that there was no carbon on the foam anymore. Foam is green and the carbon is black. The difference is obvious.
There is not much that we can do about it from here. The foam section is still whole from what we can see, it is our bumper. It is impossible to complete the rest of the course like this, both in terms of safety and performance.
The crash box is there just in case of hitting an unidentified floating object, and behind it is the proper structural bow, but that is not good at sustained high speeds. Our choice is to replace this ‘fuse’.
We discovered this just before the Cape Verde islands, but by then it was too late to react. We can take the risk to push on to the Brazilian coast and waste less time But we have been at around 17 knots averages for three days. Considering the volume of water which is pushed under the bow in these we did not fancy sticking our heads down any closer!