Louis Burton had to plug in and unplug to be able to leave -

Stéphane Maillard / Bureau Vallée 2

Each phase of the race has its own penalty.

The ofnis for the descent of the Atlantic, the breaking waves of hulls at the entrance to the Indian Ocean and now the computer systems out of order in the southern seas.

Romain Attanasio but above all Damien Seguin and Louis Burton have had big problems in recent days.

For them, it was the autopilot that started messing around, resulting in improbable trajectories that can be seen on the race map and pushing them to take shelter in windless areas to repair their system. electronic.

Double bad luck for the skipper on Apicil: not only did his main autopilot let him down, but on top of that, the backup one stalled several times, leading to several course deviations (heap departures, as they say in the middle ).

For Burton, on Bureau Vallée 2, it was not much better.

He even considered quitting after the failure of his pilot who displayed an error message a week ago.

“The first message in which he informs us that he is in trouble,” his boat captain Arthur Hubert tells us, “is at 4 pm.

Knowing that he started tinkering before because he first had to try to figure it out on his own.

The pilot resolution in degraded mode [basically, the mode that says to the boat 'listen goes straight'], we found it at 2am and we only managed to see a pilot in the correct mode later .

Suffice to say that we had a good evening.

“Especially the skipper, forced to put his race in parentheses to plunge his hands in the sludge with a headlamp for only ally.

A quick reminder of the importance of autopilot:

in 2020, you won't end a Vendée Globe without.

This is why competitors always have one or two remedies on board.

And no, we see you coming, killjoy that you are, it has nothing to do with any decline in sailing skills.

This is what Thomas Rettant (LinkedOut, current 2nd in the race) told us about the usefulness of the device on board before the big start: “Sailing alone today, without a pilot, is not possible on these machines. -the.

You have to sleep, you have to eat, navigate, so even with a pilot who helms 99% of the time you don't get bored, there isn't a lot of downtime.

»So much so that, according to an estimate with the wet finger of Arthur Hubert, the navigators of the fleet hardly helm more than one hour per 24 hours.

“When you're in a crew, you can afford it.

When they go there it is often out of the sail or when they feel a little slow.

For example if you have something a little blocked under the boat, if you drag a small net, something in the water or if you have a badly adjusted sail, you take the helm and you will feel that the boat is not not as usual.

"

Systems that fear harsh conditions

But let's come back to our sheep.

How do we explain this cascade of damage at the front of the race?

Is it a coincidence?

Certainly not.

Autopilots are delicate devices, but not to the point of messing around for nothing if the seas are calm and the gentle rays of the sun brush against your skin.

Cold, humidity, extreme wind speed, the hell of the south is breeding ground for breakage of any kind, and pilot damage is on the list.

Louis Burton's boat manager explains.

“The racing conditions necessarily play a role, in the sense that the pilot is connected to an electrical system which is in the boat and which receives information from various hypersensitive sensors which measure how the boat goes up or down, goes left or right… In the southern seas, the boat makes walls of waves and it falls suddenly there are shocks and that can cause there are small electrical breakdowns.

You can have a little water at the bottom of the boat which will bounce, a small drop which will go to an electric wire and put it in short circuit, and there it is a drama.

Or you can '' lose '' your gps in shocks, just a piece of data that jumps for a minute and puts everything at fault.

"

And the galley does not end there.

In the case of Louis Burton, the pilot damage caused collateral damage linked to uncontrolled maneuvers.

Damages on which the team “does not want to communicate”, because in the Vendée Globe as in war, we give as little information as possible to enemies, especially when we play the podium.

“When we look at the speeds over 4 hours and even over 24 hours, the data is very good, so the boat is still in good health.

“With autopilot, life is still easier.

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