Alex Thompson was leading in the Vendee Globe solo round the world race
https://www.vendeeglobe.org/…/back-in-black-thomson-confirm…
when he discovered a potentially catastrophic structural failure in his boat. He’s in the Southern Ocean, thousands of miles from anything and hundreds of miles from the nearest human who is probably a competitor. He got in touch with his ground crew and they managed to fix it. This is what he posted this mornin. IT struck me as the perfect metaphor for how many of us might be feeling about our country today.
“I’ve got a sail up again!” Thomson told his team “I’m sailing in the right direction and I’m back in the race. I’m super happy about that. It’s been a tough couple of days, an awful lot of work – cutting, grinding, sanding, gluing and there’s still a lot more to go. It’s certainly not over yet but the structure in the bow is now stable, it’s not moving any more and so I can sail in these moderate conditions, in the right direction. Happy days”.“It’s obviously disappointing but I’m not going to dwell on the negatives here because I think there are way more positives.” Thomson continued. “It’s positive that I found it before it was catastrophic, it’s positive that it happened in the conditions it happened in, which meant the leaders and the rest of the fleet weren’t moving away at 500 miles a day. So I’m just super happy that I’m still in the race. It could so easily have been the end of the race for me”.“I’ve been here before, and all you can do is get back on your feet and keep pushing forwards. I’ve probably still got a night and a half of work to do but, looking at the weather, the next few days are going to be quite light, so good conditions for me to finish the job”.
From Race organizers:
As reported in our 1830hrs news Alex Thomson is pacing the boats around him, and indeed has been a little quicker at times, returning to ‘race mode’
