GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe face challenges to return in 2023 The Ocean Race after dismasting
/dnl.eurosport.com/sd/img/placeholder/eurosport_logo_1x1.png){kind=logo}
Updated 15/05/2023 at 10:13 GMT
It has been a challenging Ocean Race so far for GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe, who suffered damage to their boat on Leg 3 and were then forced to dismast in Leg 4 as they approached the finish in Newport. Skipper Benjamin Dutreux has revealed that they will not start Leg 5 and he is unsure when they will return, but they are determined to play a part in the race.
‘Pretty amazing!’ – Watch the arrivals in Newport after Leg 4 of the Ocean Race
GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe are weighing up when they can return to The Ocean Race after losing their mast on Leg 4.
Benjamin Dutreux's crew were just over 600 miles east of the finish in Newport when they were forced to dismast in challenging weather conditions that saw gale force winds rise above 30 knots.
The boat will not be on the start line for Leg 5, which gets under way on May 21. Be sure to follow all the live action from Newport on Eurosport as well as discovery+, beginning with the in-port race at 18:30 UK time on May 20, followed by the leg start at 18:30 UK time on May 21.
Despite the frustration and uncertainty about the reasons for the mast mishap, Dutreux is trying to look ahead to the next stage of the adventure, even if he recognises that the budgetary constraints pose some concerns for a team of this size.
"It's a real battlefield...we are trying to find solutions", says Dutreux, who this weekend arrived in Halifax, Canada after a cargo ship agreed to give the team fuel after they ran out.
GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe had already had to deal with frustration during Leg 3 of The Ocean Race as they suffered serious damage on the bottom of the hull and the whole team had to work hard to repair it in order to take the start of the next leg.
A race against the clock was brilliantly won, but fate intervened again when the mast broke as they approached Newport.
"There was wind and sea, and even though we were fairly conservative, being only under mainsail with three reefs, the boat was hitting hard," says Dutreux.
Disappointed and inevitably frustrated, Dutreux is all the more so because he still doesn't know the reasons for the dismasting.
"As everything is instrumented now, we know that all the tensions were good and that everything fell at the same time. So we don't know why, and it's even more frustrating", he says.
While waiting to find the origin of the incident, GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe must face another unanswered question: when will the boat be able to go back to sea and compete?
If Holcim-PRB, skippered by Kevin Escoffier, will be able to attack again in the next leg despite their dismasting during Leg 4, it is another story for GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe.
As they wait for a "real study of the boat" to know the extent of the damage, the team already knows that it will have to give up Leg 5, which starts on May 21 and features a transatlantic race from Newport to Denmark.
It is planned for a cargo ship to bring the boat back to Europe and the team intend to keep going at The Ocean Race, even if it looks "very complicated" for the start of Leg 6 in early June.
"There is a 50% chance that we will be in Aarhus and 90% in The Hague [for the start of leg 7]," says Dutreux.
"For that, we have to find another team that agrees to lend us a mast. We know that some teams have spare masts on the shelf, we have to see if they agree to lend it to us or rent it to us. It is possible but it is also a question of money. We must not jeopardise our future projects.
"We are the smallest team in The Ocean Race. We have a young team that doesn't necessarily have the same means as the others. Here, we may reach our budgetary limits."
While the team is determined "not to get into trouble" for the future, the desire to return is nevertheless strong.
"We have lived through difficult moments since the beginning but we have also lived through magical moments and it's been more than five months since we left home, so it would be nice to close this project with a last step for the morale," concludes the skipper.
- - -
Watch live coverage from every leg of The Ocean Race 2022-23 on discovery+ and eurosport.com
Scan me
Related Topics
Share this article
Advertisement
Advertisement