Early on Wednesday morning after a dramatic thunder and lightening storm the competitors of leg three of the Solitaire du Figaro arrived in Les Sables D’Olonne. Jérémie Beyou was across the line first, his second win in the series followed by Fabien Delahaye. There was frustration and disappointment for Sharp on The Spirit of Independence coming in 20th after he had been consistently placed in the top ten throughout the race.

Phil Sharp on The Spirit of Independence in the Raz de Seine
(Photo credit Courcoux/Marmara – Le Figaro)

In the final stages of the race Sharp dropped over 10 places from a well-deserved 5th. “I ended up with a big clump of weed and I didn’t know what it was. I was in fifth place before we gybed, and when I gybed I couldn’t get any speed out of the boat. I thought it was me, I was quite tired and I wasn’t thinking too rationally, I thought I did something wrong with my trim. I was going slowly maybe for about one hour. But eventually I looked under the keel and there was a huge mass of seaweed. I was losing about one knot of boat speed. Then I looked for my weed stick and I didn’t have it, it must have fallen off the boat so I tried using a line to get the weed off and that didn’t work. I decided that the only thing to do was to stop the boat, take the spinnaker down, reverse the boat and put the spinnaker back up. I managed to free the weed, and then the boat was going instantly much faster again. I managed to get some places back, finish fast.”

Disappointment and tiredness

Sharp explains his disappointment with the result and how tiredness is building up as the intensity of competing in this tough race takes it toll. “I am disappointed but very encouraged at the same time, annoyed that I couldn’t put all that work into a result. I was playing quite a conservative game because it’s very easy to loose, I was quite happy with my tactics. It really worked, I was in a hunt for a top finish and one of the problems was when it went light off of Penmarch’, the people from behind had a bit of an advantage because they could get inshore more easily, where there was more breeze, and then a better angle of sail. Needless to say, by the time we all have gone out and gybed I was in fifth place and definitely thinking of a chance to be in the top five… but it was much more complicated than that. I was very tired during the race, I didn’t get much sleep on the first night, I slept about one hour and a half each night otherwise I could not function and then yesterday I was falling asleep at the helm. I think that the tiredness just catches up on you, cumulatively, leg four will be even worse…”

Overall rankings

Jérémie Beyou has cemented his lead with his second consecutive win and remains in first place in the overall rankings, followed by Delahaye and Lunven. Sharp is 18th overall (which is where he was placed after the second leg), he less than one hour behind 6th position. In the rookie class, Sharp is in 3rd place only 44 minutes behind leader Morgan Lagraviere. If he continues to maintain position amongst the leaders in the final leg and luck is on his side, then the hunt will be on for Sharp to secure an overall top ten finish and claim the top spot in the rookie class.

Final leg

The final stage of the 2011 Solitaire du Figaro leaves Les Sables D’Olonne on Sunday 21 August bound for Dieppe. It is free course with the only course mark to be followed being the Ile d’Aurigny to be left to port before taking on the Alderney race. Wind dependent, it could see some skippers taking a route through the Channel Islands.