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The team at ARKEA PAPREC and French skipper Sébastien SIMON have confirmed he has abandoned his Vendée Globe. Last Wednesday morning at 0820hrs UTC his IMOCA hit a floating object and badly damaged his starboard foil and its housing. The boat has had a steady ingress of water which SIMON has largely dealt with. But with repairs seeming to be extremely complicated and probably requiring the foil to be cut into pieces, Simon and his team made the tough decision that he will give up. SIMON is on his way to Cape Town. He should reach the South African bay overnight from Saturday to Sunday.

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The three Vendée Globe leaders have the foot hard down on the accelerator, racing behind this low pressure system and so making good speeds and opening up the gap back to the chasing peloton which is now more than 200 miles behind. Charlie DALIN is doing his best to contain the highly motivated Thomas RUYANT who works constantly to find best speeds from his compromised IMOCA which lacks most of its port foil and Yannick BESTAVEN remains super quick. And now seven IMOCA's have crossed the longitude of Cape LEEUWIN, young Ben DUTREUX - the rookie from the Vendée region - is very happy to have crossed fourth.

After race leader for more than three weeks Charlie DALIN reported damage to his port foil system on APIVIA yesterday evening and has been slowed to less than 6 kts dealing with the issue as best he can it is Thomas RUYANT who the Vendée Globe standings this morning. But while all three leaders, RUYANT (LinkedOut) Yannick BESTAVEN (Maitre Coq), and DALIN (APIVIA) were within ten miles of each other this morning on the early rankings it was RUYANT who has been going fastest and looking set to capitalise when he resumed the lead he last held on 21st November.