Was he there in third with a podium place, or wasn’t he? For the second time in the Sables d’Olonne to Aviles stage of the Transgascogne 2017, Tom Dolan’s tracker on his Mini 650 IRL 910 failed to check in writes W M Nixon.
The previous time was Sunday evening, when he was shown for an hour as having come to a stop when he was in fact making hay as he worked his way through the fleet.
This time the non-signal was at 1330hrs FR today, as the fleet leaders struggled out of the local calm off the tricky headland of Cabo Penas, knowing the finish was just seven miles to the southwest, and the nearer they could get to it, the better the breeze might become, even if another calm lay over the entrance to Aviles harbour itself.
Woman sailing star Clarisse Cremer did best of this final game of snakes and ladders, getting herself ahead of regular leader Erwan le Draoulec by sailing at 2.8 knots while he could only manage 2, putting a useful gap of just over a mile between herself and the previous front-runner as she crawled towards the finish line to cross first at 1352 today, the race’s slow pace underlined by the fact she’d recorded an average speed of only 4.8 knots.
It was enough to give her a great win, but for Tom Dolan in a private battle for third place with Pierre Chedeville, it looks as though they’ve both lost out on two boats which came up on them by holding closer inshore, and they could be battling for fifth at the finish later this afternoon.
