David Sineau, who was second across the line had this to say:

” The repair list is long. The most penalizing damage was the loss of my gennaker just before the doldrums. This is actually the sail we need the most to help us get out of the doldrums. This might have been for the better as I had to steer away from the rhumb line to sail better angles under spinnaker. I then lost all my wind instruments because of three birds who damaged them. So no more wind speed and wind angle….truly blind. Then the torn gennaker passsing under the boat damaged the keel foil, affecting greatly the hydrodynamic… Yves Le Blevec is a superb winner. He sailed really fast… I had a lot of fun sailing. I never pushed myself over the edge. My training on the water for the last 3 years paid off, I did not do any broach, which cost so much to my competitors.”

Yves Le Blevec, the former boat captain on the maxi catamaran Orange, crossed the finish line in Salvador this morning.

Because his radio was broken he had no idea he was in the lead for most of the second leg, so you can just imagine how he felt coming into the finish to find he had won the race!

Here’s an except from the Trasat website:

“It is an incredible, extraordinary feeling. I live for that project only since two years already, a project that my partner “Actual” and I built with a common aim… Winning only… As we did today in Salvador de Bahia! But that entire story is huge. Remember where I come from. I prepared both my boat and I these lasts months without knowing if I would leave. (- Yves knew that he could line up at start only a few days before the start as 4 other sailors -) After the first leg I really was under pressure because of my opponents level: Isa (Joschke), Sam (Manuard), but also Hardy, Deshayes and all the others… I have belt along as much as I could, without resting, and only at few moments I was worried for my boat and wondered if all that was reasonable.

When I passed the Equator where I dismasted in 2005, I had the feeling to be free. And, I had to concentrate again on my objectives by saying to myself “but you haven’t done anything yet, you still have half an Ocean to cross.” And at that moment, my boat fulfilled me… Easy, gliding in the trade winds, being incredibly well balanced. Yet I solicited it so much. Again I really doubt in the ‘Pot au Noir’. I have slow down a first time, and when I believed that the Pot was a bad memory; a monstrous cloud filled with storms and rain stuck me up and punished me by down pouring again and again… I, then, thought that the other competitors were cooler more east. I constantly was afraid to be overtaken under Brazilian Coasts. Without having any news since 6 days, I had to keep being aggressive. The boat did the rest…”