SAILING: Jonathan Spencer Jones
JUST over seven months and some 27 000 miles after setting out from Charleston, United States, 35-year-old Frenchman Christophe Auguin on Sceta Calberson, sailed into the record books when he arrived back in Charleston on April 27 to capture his second straight Class I and overall victory — and the $100 000 first prize — in the BOC Challenge singlehanded around the world race.
Auguin completed the 5 900-mile leg from Punta del Este in just under 25 days, scoring a third individual leg win and a total elapsed time for the course of 121 days 17 hours 11 minutes — some 19 hours off the pace of his elapsed time in the previous (1990-91) event. And with it, he has equalled the accomplishment of fellow countryman Philippe Jeantot, who won the first two races in 1982-83 and 1986-87.
“When Philippe Jeantot won his first BOC, I was a kid. I was very young,” said Auguin. “I read about it in a magazine. For me it was a big thing, a dream. And now it is a dream come true.”
But it was not all plain sailing, with Auguin finishing a difficult first leg in third place a week behind the then leader Isabelle Autissier. But with Autissier forced out in the second leg after losing her mast for the second time, he was quick to capitalise on the opportunity and went on to win both southern ocean legs.
It was a severely depleted fleet of 11 yachts, down from the 20 which originally left Charleston, which started the fourth leg — and within 24 hours the duels were resumed with Auguin in the lead followed by Steve Pettengill on Hunter’s Child, and in Class II David Adams on True Blue followed by Giovanni Soldini sailing Kodak.
Light winds during the first week kept the yachts fairly tightly grouped, but once away from the South American coast the leaders began to pull away, with Auguin extending his lead in Class I and Adams his in Class II as Soldini put in to Recife to repair a broken forestay.
Holding fifth place in his class, South African JJ Provoyeur sailing Novell South Africa regarded this passage as “hard, harder than any other part of the race with the ever-changing winds and thunder and heavy downpours of rain”, but nevertheless, crossing the Equator was cause for celebration.
Auguin then proceeded to make steady progress towards Charleston, followed two days later by Pettengill, who took second place overall with a total elapsed time of 128 days four hours, then David Scully on Coyote in third place for the leg and less than an hour later, Jean Luc van den Heede on Vendee Enterprises — completing his fourth solo circumnavigation under sail — in fourth place but third overall.