Herrmann’s crew far behind
Team Guyot keeps their nerves in the doldrums
2/1/2023 5:22 p.m
The first week of the second stage in the Ocean Race is over: After the last place on stage one, the Berlin skipper Robert Stanjek and his team Guyot are leading the fleet on course Cape Town. Also because, in contrast to the competition, they choose the better course.
Good times for Team Guyot, difficult times for Boris Herrmann’s Team Malizia: After the first week of the second leg of the circumnavigation, the Franco-German Guyot Environnement – Team Europe is leading the ocean race fleet on course Cape Town. After crossing the equator, all five boats are already in the southern hemisphere. By the morning of the seventh day at sea, Team Guyot had established a lead of almost 70 nautical miles over Kevin Escoffier’s Team Holcim – PRB with Susann Beucke from Strande. Team Malizia fought without Herrmann, who was injured and waiting in Cape Town, and with skipper Will Harris at almost 170 nautical miles behind as the tail light to catch up with the field.
Behind the previous Guyot success on stage two from Cape Verde to Cape Town is the good positioning of the black and green yacht. While the other crews had tried their luck and more wind in the calm belt around the equator further west in the multi-day doldrums, the Guyot team stayed closer to the direct course to Cape Town. “Our team did a very precise job,” said 41-year-old Robert Stanjek from Berlin.
And further: “If you look at the tracking, the sailed courses of the other boats with a few jibes and adjustment angles look much more nervous than ours. We tried to invest every meter in moving forward to the south.” The field becomes progressively faster in the trade winds on the South Atlantic. “The conditions are ideal for us, we’re running at super speeds,” reported Stanjek.
The equator baptisms of those sailors who sailed to the southern hemisphere for the first time provided a refreshing change in the hot area around the zero degree of latitude. Robert Stanjek and Team Guyot’s Berlin foreman Phillip Kasüske also had to rub themselves with a hideous concoction of liquids from on board, be checked by Neptune aka navigator Seb Sebastien and have their hair cut by team mate Anne-Claire Le Berre.