Arkea Ultim Challenge: Caudrelier faces second milestone, sleep better with apnoea training
Tatjana Pokorny
· 25.01.2024
With a lead of almost 1,500 nautical miles over Thomas Coville, leader Charles Caudrelier continues to dominate the Arkea Ultim Challenge after the 18th night at sea. In the early hours of 25 January, the "Maxi Edmond de Rothschild" skipper thundered along the ice edge at around latitude 46° south with a four-hour average of more than 34 knots.
Arkea Ultim Challenge: The second cape is approaching
The unstoppable leader of the solo round-the-world race is expected to cross the longitude of Cape Leeuwin on Thursday evening. After the Cape of Good Hope, this is the second of the three important milestones in this historic premiere of the non-stop round-the-world race on the Ultim giant foils. The "Cape Coronation" traditionally takes place with the Cape Horn Passage.
Charles Caudrelier still had around 13,700 nautical miles to cover before the end of his race on Thursday morning. He will soon pass Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania and enter the South Pacific. Behind the dominator, the positions for Thomas Coville on "Sodebo Ultim 3" and Armel Le Cléac'h on "Banque Populaire XI" in second and third place seem to be cemented for the time being.
Anthony Marchand before pit stop in Cape Town
Anthony Marchand (4th), who decided to make a pit stop yesterday in consultation with his team after the collision on Tuesday with severe foil damage, is expected to arrive in Cape Town during the night. There, Tom Laperche's team is already working on his "SVR Lazartigue". Around 4,400 nautical miles behind Charles Caudrelier, the tail light Éric Péron is still fighting his way towards the Cape of Good Hope in the South Atlantic.
In a recent interview with the organisers of the Arkea Ultim Challenge, Thomas Coville summed up how to make successful progress in the Southern Ocean: "You need opportunity, talent and luck. The "Sodebo Ultim 3" skipper is of the opinion that Charles Caudrelier has all three ingredients. Coville knows from his own experience that the winner of the last Route du Rhum has to work hard for his top position despite his huge lead, as does Guillaume Rottée from the race organisers.
Charles must be pretty tired right now" (Guillaume Rottée)
Guillaume Rottée said: "Charles must be pretty tired right now." The weather conditions are leading the two-time Ocean Race winner close to the ice edge. Caudrelier and "Maxi Edmond de Rothschild" are completing exhausting gybes in series. Rottée explained: "With every gybe to the south, he is very close to the EAZ (Editor: Ice boundary) to within 1.6 nautical miles of this limit!"
Thomas Coville has recently had to contend with somewhat fiercer conditions than his fellow competitors, making slightly slower progress in the Indian Ocean between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin. His most recent four-hour average was just under 30 knots on the morning of 25 January. "We have seen that his course has not always matched the normal speed of his boat recently," explained Guillaume Rottée. In the meantime, however, the course inconsistencies had disappeared again.
Two Ultim trimarans in the pit stop
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 nautical miles behind third-placed Armel Le Cléac'h, Anthony Marchand is steering his "Actuel Ultim 3" towards Cape Town. The Frenchman recently had to struggle through an area of high pressure, but has since picked up speed again. Marchand is expected to reach the South African harbour of Cape Town on Friday night. This will be the first time that two of the six Ultim giants will be in the pit stop at the same time, while the competition is out at sea.
It is well known that sleep plays an important role in the extreme stresses of a non-stop race over 40 to 50 days. But how does this actually work on a speeding 32-metre tri that flies through the oceans in heavy swell in the Southern Ocean? The skippers discussed this during their third week at sea. Charles Caudrelier said: "To keep going in the long term, you have to eat well and sleep well."
Arkea Ultim Challenge: Sleep in bites
According to Caudrelier, it is of course impossible to sleep for eight hours straight every night. Sleeping well is a battle in itself and requires both technical and psychological preparation. Ingredients can include special equipment, alarms and co-operation with freedivers. Sleep management has long since become a question of performance.
Solo sailors have no choice: at the start of an ultimate endurance test like the Arkea Ultim Challenge, they start to get their sleep in "bites". The sleep phases can last from a handful of minutes to around an hour and a half. Armel Le Cléac'h explained: "We try to sleep as regularly as possible, five, six, maybe seven times in 24 hours in increments of 30 minutes to an hour and a half".
As soon as the conditions are good, you have to sleep" (Armel Le Cléac'h)
The golden rule is: don't wait, take every opportunity that presents itself. "As soon as the conditions are good, you have to sleep," says Armel Le Cléac'h. "At the beginning, you might be in top form for 48 hours, but if you push yourself to the limit, you inevitably fall into a sleep deficit," explains Sébastien Josse, member of the routing group in the Banque Populaire team and co-skipper of Armel Le Cléac'h on the Transat Jacques Vabre.
"Then you take a little nap, wake up to check everything, and if it's possible, you can go back to sleep," says Seb Josse. In this way, it is possible to get between six and eight hours of sleep in 24 hours. The six skippers in the Arkea Ultim Challenge have prepared themselves differently for these necessary sleep breaks.
Customised mattresses and sleep masks in use
Armel Le Cléac'h has installed a customised mattress in his cockpit. On "Sodebo Ultim 3", Thomas Coville says he "carried out many tests to find the most suitable cushions". The eight-time circumnavigator has "a huge body pillow, a neck pillow and another for his knees". Coville also uses a sleep mask during his naps.
Attentive observers of Boris Herrmann's Imoca missions will have noticed that the five-time circumnavigator from Hamburg also operates with a sleep mask. The majority of the skippers of the Arkea Ultim Challenge have so far confirmed that they got enough sleep, even if it took a few days to get into the right rhythm in the initial phase.
Training with free divers for better sleep
However, in order to achieve a deep, restful sleep, it is very important to reach a state of letting go, of relaxation. Thomas Coville, for example, works with freediver Alice Modolo with this aim in mind. Charles Caudrelier also listens to the advice of Arnaud Jerald, the record holder in freediving (122 metres).
In an interview with the Arkea Ultim Challenge team, Arnaud Jerald said: "Charles wanted to switch off as much as possible from the boat, from the numbers and the stress, from all the information he had to have in his head. He wanted to have a choice. But freediving is all about the feeling. We start by working on breathing to lower the heart rate and let go."
It's so important to know yourself well" (Anthony Marchand)
Above all, the apnoea experience (Red.: the cessation of breathingAccording to Arnaud Jerald, this helps him to progress mentally. At the end of the joint work with the freediver, Caudrelier wanted to reach a depth of 30 metres. He had to push himself and even slow down to 25 metres before he reached the limit. "It's a way of pushing yourself to the limit, of reaching a milestone," assures the freediver. And he continues: "By achieving this, he gained experience and opened up a new path for himself."
It is also known that sailors fall back on experience in moments of stress. Everything that the Ultim participants have learnt about their ability to sleep in previous races, including in other classes, helps. The days and nights they have spent fighting their fatigue in races such as the Solitaire du Figaro or Transats. "Every sailor has their own way of falling asleep," says eight-time La Solitaire participant Anthony Marchand on "Actual Ultim 3", for example. His conviction: "It's so important to know yourself well!"
These alarm clocks are very strong, very shrill" (Sébastien Josse)
When the body is highly stressed and overtired, when the cursor goes deep into the red zone, this is precisely the time when extreme sailors need to be particularly vigilant. Because after several days of strenuous manoeuvres or tough conditions, such as during the front passage in the first week of the Arkea Ultim Challenge, it is not uncommon to fall or injure yourself because your energy tanks are empty. Or you oversleep. That's why everyone takes precautions, such as using alarm clocks.
"These alarm clocks are very strong, very shrill," explains Sébastien Josse. "The problem is that sometimes you're so tired that you integrate the alarm clock into your dream and end up waiting five to ten minutes before responding." Skippers know that you can lose a race if you wake up too late. Many fans still remember Alex Thomson's mishap on the 2018 Route du Rhum: a few miles before the finish, his electric heart rate monitor failed because its battery was broken. Thomson was not woken up and crashed into a cliff.
It is the magic of the experience of knowing yourself and your limits" (Sébastien Josse"
However, sleep management on board generally proves that the body is highly adaptable. "Of course, sometimes you wake up and need a few seconds to remember where you are, on board, in the race, with this and that sail configuration and this and that speed," explains Sébastien Josse. "But most of the time you wake up just before the alarm. That means you're not too burnt out when you wake up. And that's the magic of the experience of knowing yourself and your limits."
