Breathless in the Southern Ocean. That must be what it feels like for the six Class40 duos currently active in the Globe40. At the front of the plucked field, Team Belgium Ocean Racing - Curium and "Crédit Mutuel" are engaged in their familiar duel for the lead. It remains impressive how evenly matched the Lombard Lift V2 "Belgium Ocean Racing - Curium" from the beginning of 2025 and the Raison-Max 2 "Crédit Mutuel" (2024) of Ian Lipinski, who is taking a break on this leg, are.
Lipinski has left the Pacific pitch to Antoine Carpentier and Alan Roberts. For the Belgians, owner Benoît Hantzperg and Djemila Tassin step on the gas. Taking a break and recharging his batteries was important to him. But it was also important not to miss the fifth stage and the Cape Horn passage, which will follow the current stage.
Globe40: 24-hour record for mixed duo
The last time the Belgians had gained a tiny lead of 1.4 nautical miles over the Franco-British duo on "Crédit Mutuel" was in the early afternoon of 11 January. It will not have been the last change of lead in this thrilling duel for victory in the Globe40. The two scow-bow boats still had around 3300 nautical miles to go on the fourth Globe40 leg to Valparaiso on Sunday, when day eleven had begun.
Owner and skipper Benoît Hantzperg and Belgian-Spanish co-skipper Djemila Tassin approach the second half of the leg with the certainty of having improved the team's own 24-hour record for Class40ies once again shortly before the weekend on 9 January. At an average speed of 19.16 knots, they had sailed 459.78 nautical miles by last Friday, which was even further than the 457.41 nautical miles achieved by Benoît Hantzperg and Renaud Dehareng on Globe40 leg two between Cape Verde and La Réunion.
The fleet continues to have to deal with heavy weather this weekend and at the start of the week. A recent clip from the "Wilson" crew shows how the Austrian Lisa Berger and her Welsh co-skipper "Escape the storm at full speed". The sailors and their competitors had already been observing the storm depth development for a while. On Saturday, Berger and Edwards-Leaney reacted and began to head north.
Approaching storm lows, flight to the north
"We want to avoid the worst of the heavy weather", Lisa Berger had reported in a detailed and worth seeing clip from See here. "We really don't want to encounter 50 knots of wind and huge waves," explained the circumnavigator from Lake Attersee, who opened the current section with the Globe40 fleet on New Year's Day. In her clip, Lisa Berger also showed what it looks like below deck on board Wilson. Plus surfing impressions of "Wilson".
The after Provisional output The Globe40 field, reduced to a sextet for Lennart Burke and Melwin Fink and the retirement of Thibaut Lefévère and Nicolas Guibal ("Free Dom"), remains challenged in the south of the Roaring Fouries. Like the "Wilson" duo on the oldest boat in the fleet, the pursuers on "Jangada Racing" and "Whiskey Jack" had also recently decided to take a more northerly alternative course.
Not so the team behind the top two in third place on "Barco Brasil": José Guilherme Caldas and Luiz Bolina sailed 667 nautical miles behind the leading Belgians in the early afternoon of Sunday, initially sailing close to the ice edge at 50 degrees latitude, at least five degrees further south than their pursuing trio.
Stormy start to the week at Globe40
Crews and race organisers are expecting further heavy weather in the South Pacific on Monday. Two areas of low pressure have recently approached, one from the north-west and the other from the south-west. Winds of around 50 knots are still expected around the 50th parallel south, with gusts of up to 60 knots. The swell can swell to six metres or more. The lows are moving eastwards, sweeping across the fleet from back to front. Click here for the Globe40 tracker, which is updated every four hours. The map with the positions shows how the storm lows are approaching.
