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Saturday January, 2026 - Day 42
A slowdown, a foil, and a restart
Moving eastward, the high-pressure system centered off the coast of Uruguay has blocked the progress of IDEC SPORT Maxi Trimaran crewed by the women of The Famous Project CIC. The result: a whole day of slow sailing, punctuated by numerous gybes in search of wind. The wind is now starting to fill the sails of the large multihull, which is gradually lengthening its stride northward this morning. A new challenge of the same kind is looming in the form of the Saint Helena high-pressure system, an extension of which is expanding off the coast of Brazil. Circumnavigating it to the west will require sailing as close as possible to the wind, an exercise that the eight sailors have rarely had to perform since leaving Ushant, in a very mild north-northeast flow of about twelve knots and on a very manageable sea with waves of less than two meters. Yesterday's extremely calm conditions also allowed the crew to notice the severe damage to their starboard foil, the same one that, as we remember, had collided at high speed with a large fishing net and its floats during the passage under Leeuwin. When trying to raise it as the light winds approached, the crew could only note its delamination. It is now raised to its highest position, unusable. This damage does not concern much the crew, as the Maxi Trimaran was designed in 2006 without foils. The equator is just over 2 000 miles away this morning, and Alexia (Barrier), Dee (Caffari), Annemieke (Bes), Rebecca (Gmür Hornell), Deborah (Blair), Molly (LaPointe), Támara (Echegoyen), and Stacey (Jackson) still expect to reach it by the end of next week.
Alexia Barrier: The starboard foil is unusable
"As for the foil, well, it was when we raised it last night, because there was no wind, that we noticed it was damaged on the lower part. It was probably weakened by hitting that fishing net before Cape Leeuwin.
And then we must have hit something else when we were going at high speed, but in any case, we did not feel any impact. So it was a bit of a surprise when we raised the foil. We secured it in the up position. We cannot use it anymore, but that's okay, because the boat was built without a foil, so we'll sail without a starboard foil.
And that's it, we're not stressed about it."