Vendée Globe: Golding among seven skippers given time penalties

Britain’s Mike Golding is among seven Vendée Globe skippers given time penalties for sailing into the traffic separation lane off Finisterre, but his penalty is just 30 minutes.

It has taken the jury headed by Bernard Bonneau nine days to deliberate on protests brought by the race committee and the other British competitor, Alex Thomson.

France’s Jean-Pierre Dick is penalised just 20 minutes while the other five, Jean le Cam, Dominique Wavre, Javier Sanso, Tanguy de Lamotte, and Zbigniew Gutkowski were all penalised two hours. A protest against Kito de Pavant was dismissed.

But Gutkowski will not have to worry as he became the sixth of the 20 starters who set off to race singlehanded round the world to announce he was retiring. A failure to fix a self-steering gear problem was his undoing.

Armel le Cleac’h, now south of the equator chased by François Gabart and the leading group of first to sixth-placed Thomson, covering 65 miles, have broken away from the next group, headed by Golding a further 100 miles astern.